Flip Should Not Be Too Flip
Posted by anastasia on 12-19-2006
Suprise! Conde Nast's new teen site is named…Flip.com. It was funny at the NYC Ypulse Teen Media Mashup because even though AdAge.com let that cat out of the bag way back in an unauthorized piece, our poor roundtable panelist Christopher Gonzalez, Flip.com's executive editor, couldn't say anything about the name because of an exclusive they gave to a particular publication. Looks like it was the Wall Street Journal, and today's preview article about the site is free for everyone to read.
The site is launching in February, and while it's certainly too early to make any definitive predictions now, I have some reactions to what I read in the WSJ. Not that anyone but the handful of people who worked with me at Oxygen back in the day when we launched "Trackers" would remember this, BUT I ran the website for our POV-J (point of view journalist) program, which was a segment on "Trackers" and launched a scrapbook feature — the idea being that our audience would get to know these teen reporters through their virtual scrapbooks. It was all straight up HTML (hey, it was 2000), but the initial concept was similar.
Anyhow, here are my initial thoughts:
Yay for the "Flip Squad" - I'm all for any new product launch that is for teens involving teens in the process. Good for CondeNet for doing this and listening to feedback.
It's not "hormones" it's identity. One Conde person is quotes as talking about teens need to customize everything as "It must be the hormones — they customize everything." Ouch. Kind of condescending. But we all know that teens are in the developmental stage of identity formation so personalizing and putting stuff out there in large quantities is part of the process of figuring out who you are.
Exclusivity can backfire. This whole paragraph made me wince: "Like many teenage endeavors, flip is likely to have a hierarchy. The site will have online clubs — including an animal-rights club and a writing club — and some will accept a limited number of members. Users can comment on other girls' flip books. 'The super-alpha girls who want to talk about Miu Miu [designer shoes] can do that,' says Jamie Pallot, the editorial director of CondeNet. "And the nerdy ones can talk about," he pauses, looking to his colleagues for assistance. 'What do the nerdy ones talk about?'" It's just so "Devil Wears Prada/Ugly Betty" isn't it? Part of what is so inviting about Web 2.0 is the spirit that anyone can participate. I get that there is also power in heirarchy and V.I.P.-ness, but I would be very careful about creating anything that might piss off a "nerdy" girl who thinks she's super-alpha and is somehow rejected.
Here are what I see as being the main challenges for these magazine companies trying to play in this space:
1) Applying an aspirational editorial model to a space that is all about being YOU (you know the person of the year). To my point above, if the vibe comes off as snooty or elitist, you will severly limit how big your audience will be. Maybe this is what your advertisers want - smaller, more sophisticated numbers, but it is a fine line to walk.
2) Limited tech resources. Unfortunately, content is no longer king. These companies may be beefing up their editorial or community staffs, but it will be hard for them to compete with the large teams of developers driving new features at MySpace, YouTube or any of the big social networking sites. I'm pretty sure these "Flip books" are out of the box, i.e. the technology was developed by a third party. So when girls start demanding changes, new features, etc. they won't be able to respond as quickly as if they had built the functionality themselves.
3) Fitting into the "ecosystem." It's not just about hoping girls will post something on their MySpace page telling their friends about Flip.com. It's about leveraging widgets or applications that seemlessly fits on MySpace or Bebo or Facebook. Flip may want to look at some of the more popular slideshow sites and partner, creating a promotional slide show that girls can start spreading around on MySpace.
Related: WWD is reporting that former Seventeen EIC candidate Amy Goldwasser is planning to launch her own teen title and is looking for backers. From the article: "'Teenage girls who are now reading grown-up magazines need something that's fresh and speaks to them,' Goldwasser told WWD. Though she acknowledged that teen magazines have hit a rough patch, with Ellegirl, Teen People and YM having met their demises, she argued: 'The first generation that makes their own media…[is] over being published online, because anybody can be.' Um….good luck Amy!