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The magazines-about-the-Internet niche has proven fairly volatile so far. Publishers are convinced there’s a huge potential market for coverage of digital technologies; readers seem less sure. The Net, NetGuide, Websight, Virtual City, The Internet Underground, and Digital Diner are just a few of the titles that have come and gone. Those still clinging to life continue to search for the formula that will lead to mainstream success.
| YAHOO! INTERNET LIFE | THE WEB | WIRED | TIME DIGITAL | INTERNET (U.K.) | |
| Cover Slogan | World’s Best-Selling Net Magazine! | The Ultimate Guide to the Internet | Ijkota! | Your Guide to Personal Technology | Britain’s Best-Selling Iner Magazine |
| Target Audience | People people | People who believe marketing superlatives | People who pretend to know what Ijkota! means | People who have no clue what Ijkota! means | British people |
| Cover artwork | Shaquille O’Neal hugging a large globe | Rosie O’Donnell, Radiohead, a random urban couple | Blue-lipped cyberbabe with fashionable headpiece screwed into her forehead | Steven Spielberg, Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, and lesser-known new media figures | A large stoplight |
| Celebrity insight | Joe Montana: “All the media are equal, except that the Internet…is slightly better.” | M.C. Hammer: “Companies in Silicon Valley have developed the technology to bring forth…ideas I had two or three years ago.” | Miss Manners: “E-mail is not the means by which you tell someone that you want to marry them.” | Sonny Bono: “In no way should the freedom of access offered by the Net abolish or disregard the rights of creative people.” | (Couldn’t get any celebrities) |
| Liquor ad pages | 3 | 2 | 10 1/2 | 0 | 0 |
| Microsoft ad pages | 8 | 7 | 2 | 1/2 | 1 1/2 |
| Editorial attempts at bravery | “Tages Anzeiger, the second-largest Swiss daily newspaper… made its site’s front page into a Microsoft ad. Ewww!” | “Microsoft has been steadily gnawing away at the smaller company’s market share.” | “What would possess Bill Gates to offer such a helping hand to a competitor? Surely, it couldn’t be out of the goodness of his heart.” | “Bill Gates turns 42 today. Many happy (stock) returns.” | “Bill may have lost…round one of the browser battle, but he…is now [making] sure that whatever we switch on…will present a Microsoft interface.” |
