Wanderful Media raises $9 million more in funding from its newspaper investment partners

Just four months ago Wanderful Media, the Los Gatos digital local discovery shopping company, announced that it had added $5 million in new funding. Today, the company acquired iCircular in November, announced that it had raised an additional $9 million. The new round of funding brings its total up to $36 million.

The company which hopes to find a way to save the circulars business for newspapers is backed by 12 major newspaper companies: Advance, Belo, Community Newspaper Holdings Inc., Cox Media Group, The E. W. Scripps Company, Gannett, GateHouse, Hearst Corporation, Lee Enterprises, MediaNews Group, McClatchy, and The Washington Post Co.

Wanderful Media's CEO is Ben. T. Smith, IV, a veteran Silicon Valley entrepreneur, who was the founder of MerchantCircle (the COO comes from that start-up, as well).

Whether this is just more money circling the drain is to be seen, but the investments by major newspaper companies does follow a pattern whereby newspaper execs outsource their digital media solutions rather than build them in-house. In the print world, newspapers generally eschew any solutions that need outside vendors to succeed. They may not build their own printing presses but they spend millions making sure they are housed, maintained and operated by their own personnel.

In digital, however, newspaper companies have invested in outside firms in attempts to drive classified advertising – with the result, of course, that the category has almost completely disappeared. Worse, the financial commitments made have tied the hands of newspaper executives that would normally have been more aggressive in finding their own digital advertising solutions.

For many newspaper companies, the circular is one of the last profitable advertising segments they possess, the reason many still subscribe to the Sunday newspaper. Last November iCircular, the company many hoped would save the category, and an A.P. initiative, was acquired by Wanderful Media for "less than eight figures" (though that would still represent a large portion of Wanderful Media's own funding). Wanderful had previously bought a print to digital conversion company located in Chico, where it still maintains its development and operations office.

Wanderful's own product is called Find & Save, which for now is a web-based solution found on such newspaper websites as the San Francisco Chronicle. The company says its next move is to bring the solution to mobile and tablet devices where geolocation and push notification services can be employed.

a+ magazine: a free Newsstand magazine launches with some lofty goals; developed, released by f2f 6Sixty Digital

Looking for the first time at a new tablet-only magazine the first thing I want to see is what platform was used to create the digital magazine. Then i want to know in what orientation the magazine is to be read, and finally the file size. Then I can actually start enjoying the magazine itself.

a+ magazine presents some surprises. It's file size of 111 MB is so modest one would assume only one orientation is supported (not true) or that there would not be much interactivity (also not true).

The magazine was founded and is edited by Smokey D. Fontaine, which the app itself was built by f2f 6Sixty Digital.

The new publication is free of charge to download and subscribe to thanks to Toyota. The app opens up to the words "powered by Avalon" and the first issue itself is packed with ads for the Avalon. Launching with a single sponsor is a great way to go, something that I would think B2B publishers might want to try. Usually single sponsors are the way to go when trying to build up paid circulation to the point where ads can be sold, but by going with a free circulation model the publisher probably can hit that point much quicker
The new digital magazine's mission statement makes pretty interesting reading:

At no other point in history has digital culture been so clearly visible.

At no other point have clicks, touches & swipes so clearly defined what we like, love and feel about the world around us.

The rise of digital has brought with it an opportunity to express ourselves in ways never thought possible, to create and dream and match our imaginations with boundless possibility.

But there is a price to be paid...

The digital moment has also brought with it a transience, a nagging feeling of emptiness built into the pixels that flash across our irresistible screens.

So where is the experiencer that gives us something to truly remember? Where is the platform that dazzles us with the beauty of our creativity?

The answer is here...

There is more but you can go ahead and read the rest in the free digital magazine. A variation of the mission statement can be found in the app description, as well.

The new app has been sitting in my iPad for a couple of weeks. Since then an update has been issued to fix bugs. The app is universal, which I'm not sure was a good idea being that the design does not support the iPhone 5. Launching a digital magazine that can also be read on smartphones is a huge temptation for many publishers, I'm sure. But unless the publisher is designing a "The Magazine" or 29th Street Publishing type of publication it is usually a big mistake (though I like the original BJPhoto app that used Mag+ to create its mobile edition).

Hearst's Esquire magazine launches weekly tablet editions inside their Newsstand app to attract new readers

Hears Magazine's Esquire has begun publishing weekly tablet editions inside of its iPad Newsstand app. The weekly editions will be priced at $0.99 a piece, but will be free to those readers who already are subscribing to the iPad edition and will appear every Thursday other than on the week the main magazine becomes available.

Of course, print readers, who already are forced to subscribe again to access the digital editions, are once again locked out.

"Esquire Weekly is a little gift," writes editor in chief David Granger inside the first weekly edition. "To you, yes, our readers on the iPad. But to ourselves, too. Every time we expand Esquire's purview, each time we find a new way to broaden the topics we cover and morph the ways in which we cover them, it offers us new opportunities that always, sooner or later, surprise us by blossoming into something we really like, something really good."

The new weekly edition is, as you'd expect, not a massive issue. But it contains a fair, and maybe even generous amount of material. This isn't a Kindle Single, this is an actual tablet weekly magazine.

The design is consistent with Esquire's native tablet design (they are using the Adobe DPS) and is not overly complicated. But Esquire's staff is large enough to handle this (easy for me to say, right?) and so the added real estate can serve not only editorial purposes but advertising ones, as well.

Further, this move will reinforce Hearst's not so subtle attempt to drive readers to digital delivery. Though they do not say so, their policy of forcing print readers to choose between the postal service and Apple's Newsstand is leading to Hearst being able to brag about its digital numbers while simultaneously driving down print production costs.

"With the evolving ways our app subscribers and Esquire.com readers seek and interact with the magazine’s material, a weekly digital edition provides them with another way to access Esquire’s rich editorial on their tablet in an easily digestible format," Granger said in the magazine's announcement. "The weekly edition blends the best of new and traditional media and includes long-form content, recurring columns, video and more from our renowned writers covering a wide range of men’s lifestyle topics."

As for the app itself, Hearst will need to issue an update soon. Recent reader reviews inside the App Store have been universally bad due to continuing bugs involving issue downloads. The app, come to think of it, may not be the source of the problem, as download issues are often caused by the hosting service, subscription verification services, etc. Nonetheless, readers are not happy about the problems, though the new weekly issues may placate a few of them.

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Here is a brief walk-though the first weekly issue of Esquire:

B2B tablet magazines - Part 2: QHSE Focus Magazine launches new Newsstand app, instantly claims to be the #1 magazine (on the iPad, that is)

Another B2B magazine launch that is using the MagCast platform is QHSE Focus Magazine. The app was originally launched in April but a new app has made its way into the Newsstand, most likely to house two separate editions of the magazine, though there appears to be only one in the library right now.

The app description says that it is the "world’s No. 1 iPad magazine for Quality, HSE, Lean and 6 Sigma Professionals!" but since I am quite sure that it is the ONLY iPad magazine Quality, HSE, Lean and 6 Sigma professionals the claim can be taken with a grain of salt.

Like most MagCast digital magazines the design is pretty simplistic, and not exactly reflecting that it was produced by a seasoned magazine art director. Most of the photography looks to have come from stock photo libraries rather than being shot specifically for the magazine.

The magazine is published by Roman Gurbanov, who is from Kazakhstan and is the QHSE & Sustainability Manager at ERSAI Marine, LLC, according to Gurbanov's LinkedIn profile.

Here is the publisher's own promotional video for the magazine:

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When the B2B online media company VerticalNet was launched in the nineties, the executives went after both B2B print magazine editors and their ad sales staff. Print publishers for a brief time had to try and keep their revenue producers loyal as staffers were lured away with the promise of stock options. Losing an editor was one thing, but many B2B publishers really feared losing their ad sales staffs.

Today, though, with the emphasis on paid subscriptions, I am not seeing many ad people launching their own digital magazines. If they were we might be seeing B2B print publishers react more aggressively to any perceived threat from digital publications. For the most part there is no threat.

But I think that is going to be changing in the months to come. I know of several titles that will be launched this year that could shake things up a bit. The first B2B digital magazine that is launched, for instance, containing ads for the number one company in the industry will get the attention of traditional B2B publishers in a hurry.

B2B tablet magazines - Part One: independent UK publisher launches Commercial Kitchen; Mark Allen Group launches replica for Independent Nurse

If this were the late nineties, venture capital companies would be pouring money into digital-only B2B start-ups, so wide open is B2B to be disrupted by digital-only products. But it's not the late nineties, is it. Instead, this is the era of private equity investors. As a result, many major B2B publishing companies are hanging on by their finger nails in hopes that they will be able to cash out at some point in the future – investing in digital media only gets lip service, and only as a way of proving that their companies are increasing their value.

As a result, no publishing segment has been as slow to launch tablet editions and mobile media products. That there hasn't been a digital start-up to scare them all into action probably can be chalked up to the fact that so many editors, sales pros and publishers have left the industry, never to return.

But that doesn't mean that there are no new digital launches in B2B. Each month a couple trickle into the Apple Newsstand, new digital-only magazines like Commercial Kitchen from the U.K.

Published by Mark Taylor, the tablet-only magazine is using the MagCast platform which is centered on creating a PDF file using the iPad's specs, then (sometimes) enhancing it with add-ons like video, audio, etc.

In this case, the magazine early on contains an invitation to subscribe to updates and who knows what. It is odd that more publishers don't aggressively push to get more contact information in this way.

Because the tablet mag is designed specifically for the iPad, it is easy to read – though the use of PDFs as the main tool for the digital platform means that the layouts have to be very simple. Commercial Kitchen is charging £3.99 per issue, though the monthly subscription is only £1.99.

Other than the typical hiccups that come with not having a nice sized staff (TNM is a good example of that!), Taylor has done a pretty good job here. Throughout the magazine, and inside the videos, Taylor keeps saying "we" but the lack of a masthead inside digital edition, along with a bad typo in the editor's column, pretty much is a dead giveaway that this is a one man effort.

"Welcome to our first edition of Commercial Kitchen Magazine. I'll admit it was originally planned for early 2013 but I really didn't imagine how diffcicult (sic) the job at hand would be," writes Taylor, though I wish he would expounded on this a bit. A blog spot from February on the magazine's website says that the first issue was in production back on February 8 – so it did, indeed, take awhile to see the new magazine app go live.

Here is the introductory video found inside the digital magazine, which is a player linked out to YouTube (the issue only weighs in at about 17MB):

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The Mark Allen Group is a London and Salisbury publisher of 50 magazines and journals. Their third Newsstand app is for Independent Nurse.

Again, this app does something that U.K. B2B publishers do not do: it opens directly to a registration page. The registration is not mandatory, so it does not violate Apple's developer guidelines, but it is a smart move, nonetheless.

Getting reader information is important for all publishers, but it is essential for B2B publishers – especially when the title in question is a qualified circulation magazine (though in this case, Independent Nurse is charging for issues).

Apple's own mechanism for information sharing, its dialogue box that appears after one has subscribed, is woefully inadequate, so until Apple approves a qualification mechanism inside the Newsstand B2B publishers will have to lure the readers to voluntarily give their information. My own preference would be to invite the readers to sign up for an e-newsletter, or some other free offering.

Morning Brief: The New Yorker and WIRED apps get minor tweaks, as does The Economist; Yahoo's CEO helps the PE firms that invested in Tumblr

Condé Nast Digital rolled out a couple app updates to improve their digital editions. These included an update to The New Yorker Magazine app to improve iPhone 5 display support. The iPhone edition was originally launched in August of last year. WIRED Magazine was also updated, though the app description only mentions "cosmetic fixes" – one of those fixes may have been the app's icon as this month's issue has a concept cover that includes only text against a white background, effective in print but pretty much invisible when seen inside the App Store.

The Economist for iPad was updated:

Dear reader,

This update will, for readers on iOS6 and above, ensure your reading position in the edition is maintained if you navigate away from the application. It also improves the performance and stability of the app. For any assistance please use the in-app help.

Thank you for reading The Economist.

- The Digital editions team

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Tumblr's sale, first reported late Friday by the WSJ, was about as inevitable a sell out as there could be. Tumblr's board of investors includes Sequoia Capital, Union Square Ventures and Spark Capital, all firms that put money into the company on the promise that within a few years the company would sell itself to someone so there could be a big pay day. After putting in $125 million the pay day ended up being a $1.1 billion deal with Yahoo.

Tumblr's revenue in 2012 totalled a measly $13 million so why would Tumblr be worth $1.1 billion? The answer is that it's not, but that is just the way the game is played. PE's invest in one company, get sold to another. The execs, like members of Congress play along knowing that one day they, too, will get a payout, either through a PE investing in their company, or else a golden parachute when the time comes.

As for Tumblr, the thought is that its move towards "native advertising" will greatly increase is value, with revenue projected to greatly increase. But the idea that readers won't notice the move to what is essentially PR is highly unlikely – but then again, those that are pushing for native advertising don't think much of their readers anyways.