2.0

CBS Marketwatch has an interesting article re: the monthly business magazine Business 2.0. Calling it the “best magazine you’ve never read,” the author goes on to discuss why the mag might eventually replace “your father’s business magazine — Forbes — in the future:

Here’s the obligatory excerpt:

“Forbes is looking weaker and older as the years go by,” Quittner, 46, says. He dismisses it as “my father’s business magazine. They haven’t done anything to make the place look any younger, so we’re sweeping in.”

Business Week doesn’t fare any better. “I’m always flattered to see Business Week following us,” Quittner says. “I don’t see them as being anything but a supplement to us. Business Week tells you where we just were, and 2.0 tells you where we’re going.” Quittner reserves his most withering rebuke for Fast Company. “Fast Company?” he says. “Are they still around? We don’t even see them in our rearview mirror any more.” When he completed his good-natured trash talking, Quittner asked impishly, “Am I starting to sound like Muhammad Ali?”

But he’s not universally critical of his rivals. Quittner says Time Inc.’s Fortune magazine, consistently the most creative business magazine of all, “is a great role model for us. It is the pre-eminent business magazine to see the view from New York, from Wall Street. We have a Pacific Rim view.”

Fortune’s worldwide circulation is slightly north of 1 million, while 2.0 stands at about 550,000. Further, the median age of a 2.0 reader is 43, and three-quarters of them are men.

And what about Wired? Well, Quittner says he doesn’t regard Wired as direct competition for 2.0, either. Wired’s “young reader is in his low 20s,” while 2.0 caters to people in their 30s and 40s, he noted.

Interesting piece about a sometimes interesting magazine.

NOTE: IMHO, Time Warner has a hideous track record when to comes to spam, junk mail, privacy, etc. I WOULD BE VERY CIRCUMSPECT about giving them information — for example, sign up for a free “Business 2.0” and you may very well get deluged with spam and junk offers, UNLESS you go to their privacy page and then to their opt out page — even after THAT, you receive a message saying it may take a week to process.

Time Warner, like AOL, has their default set to “Now with extra Spam!” Just a heads up. (I cancelled all of my TWX magazines subs because of this — they are relentlessly obnoxious.)

Sources:
CBS MarketWatch

Business 2.0

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  1. Rob commented on Nov 16

    I just started receiving Business 2.0, so I can only base my judgement on one issue, but I think it is the best biz magazine out there. I think Fast Company is making a comeback, they were great, then sucked, and they are now getting better. I like Businessweek because they do in depth company profiles that I don’t see as much in other magazines, but I agree that they aren’t on the cutting edge. I never read Forbes, and I even find their web page confusing. Fortune is awesome, and I like that it comes every 2 weeks, that is just right for me. I’d like to see Business 2.0 move to bimonthly publication.

  2. Marc Brazeau commented on Nov 16

    Doesn’t everyone have a spam only hotmail account these days?

  3. Barry Ritholtz commented on Nov 18

    These guys are jerks: Here’s what they sent 3 days after the subscritption, and AFTER I opted out:

    Dear Barry Ritholtz,

    Business 2.0 appreciates your business and is committed to your satisfaction with our services.

    Our records indicate that you recently placed an order for Business 2.0. We would like to invite you to use our Order Service Survey to provide feedback on your experience and our quality of service.

    We realize that you have not yet received the first issue of your new subscription-we are most interested in your impressions of the order process itself. Your evaluation of our performance is extremely valuable and will help us to improve our services for new and renewing subscribers.

    The survey is very brief and requires only a few minutes to complete.

    To complete the survey, please click on the Web address below. You may also copy and paste the entire Web address into the address field of your browser to access the survey.

    http://survey.ccsurvey.com/time0201a/survey1.pl?ljpgNQs84b

    Many thanks for your participation! We greatly appreciate your thoughts and suggestions.

    Sincerely,

    Pat Kaufman
    Vice President, Customer Service Operations
    Business 2.0 Customer Service

    ** An important note from the survey vendor **

    Business 2.0 Customer Service, as the party who controls the data collected in this survey, may use your responses together with existing data it has about you to ensure its products and services meet your needs.

    If you are responding to this survey from outside the United States, the data collected from you may be transferred to the USA to be processed on behalf of and under the instruction of Business 2.0 Customer Service by a third party data processor based in the USA. If you want to be excluded from future surveys and survey correspondence, please REPLY to this email with the word REMOVE in the subject line.

    Here’s what I sent back

    My impression is that you are totally disrespectful of anyone’s privacy requests — I specifically opted out of EVERYTHING.
    The order isn’t even 3 days old when you violated that.

    I am totally dissatisfied. You senseless reprobates.
    PLEASE CANCEL ALL SUBSCRIPTIONS, EMAIL ADDRESSES, AND PURGE ANY INFO OF MINE YOU HAVE
    IN FACT, PURGE MY DATA TOTALLY.

    If you want to discuss this, I would be happy to tell you what i really think
    You may call my office — Wednesday or Friday between 11-12

    Barry L. Ritholtz
    Chief Market Strategist
    Maxim Group
    (212) 895-3614

    Losers . . .

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