Infoworld to fold

InfoWorld, the long-standing weekly magazine to which enterprise technology startups made a dutiful pilgrimage, is to shut down, according to a newsletter report. The title, owned by the IDG publishing group, will continue to operate as a web news site; but the print magazine, which carried celebrity columnists such as Ethernet inventor Bob Metcalfe, is dead after nearly three decades. Tech titles have been the first, in the magazine industry, to fall to web competition. Red Herring magazine, as we've reported, can't compete with Valley insider blogs such as Techcrunch and Gigaom. Industry Standard never came back after the bust. Only those publications that have reinvented themselves as general business or consumer magazines, such as Business 2.0 and Wired Magazine, are prospering. Update: the rumor's true.

4:01 PM on Fri Mar 23 2007
By Nick Denton
2,518 views
4 comments

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rexworld at 12:00 PM on 03/24/07
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That's a shame if it's true. I remember back in the 90's when they printed as a tabloid-size magazine, InfoWorld was always one of the industry trade magazines you'd subscribe to in order to stay up-to-date on the industry. Of course it's probably been seven or eight years since I had a regular subscription to any tech publication. The Internet has been a truly disruptive technology to many industries but especially publishers.

You mention how a couple pubs have survived by transitioning into general business or consumer mags. But I think they only delayed the inevitable--all paper magazines are in trouble unless they can find ways to adapt.

THey have to find other ways to monetize the expensive content they produce. Printing it on a piece of paper and sending that via snail mail is not going to be a viable business model much longer. At least not by itself, their other media like podcasting and Web sites have to contribute a greater share of the revenue or the whole enterprise is doomed.
Juha at 08:16 PM on 03/24/07
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Having written for InfoWorld in the past, it's sad to see it go to some extent, but I can fully understand why. The weekly deadline thing just doesn't work anymore.

Fondest memory: having "every man and his dog" mangled into "every person and their dog" by a rabidly gender-neutral editor.
pcalento at 01:35 PM on 03/26/07
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(From Paul Calento, SVP/Strategic Development, InfoWorld)

InfoWorld already transformed into a business where online and events not only drive growth, but already represent the dominant portion of the brand's revenue. The announcement signals a strategy to devote 100% of the effort towards the areas driving new growth, new audience and new revenue.

Inspiration:
We closely analyze industry research from sister company IDC, as well as demand-drivers identified from InfoWorld's extensive and on-going primary research on topics including SOA, Virtualization, Unified Communications, etc. We regularly connect with our advertisers on their goals. We also closely monitor media consumption patterns of our audience in IT solutions management and increasingly look at international markets where IDG has a significant footprint (EMEA and APAC), as leading indicators of where its going in the US. As a result, we developed a plan, InfoWorld "Innovation Acceleration", to focus specifically on these high growth areas in "market maker" topics, based on advertising support and media consumption patterns.

Success Metrics:
InfoWorld increasingly benchmarks market success on growth and will continue expanding into product segments that are either just developing or dismissed by the "me-too" world of traditional tech media. We've already done it with SOA, then Virtualization and now with Enterprise Data Protection...With new brands and additional market maker topics on the way.

Bottom line:
Tech media consumption is moving online and increasingly towards mobile, collaboration/social networking and multimedia. These changes allow us to focus on these opportunities for our audience and for the InfoWorld business.
donnomarz at 07:36 PM on 03/26/07
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Not sure they'll succeed online. Why? CNET Networks Business tech sites(ZDNet, TechRepublic and News.com) reach more business technology influencers than the COMBINED reach of InfoWorld, eWeek, InformationWeek and ComputerWorld online -- combined.