New York Magazine Relaunches Video Site Using Content Curation
New York magazine, the go-to-source for in-the-know New Yorkers, has relaunched the video section of its web site using the Magnify.net platform. What separates themagazine’s effort from others is its plan to actively augment video it produces itself with other video sources, including users.
For brands, the issue is that tools that work for traditional publishers also will work for brand publishers.
By”curating” others’ video, New York is looking to beef up the videosection of its site by tapping into others’ energy. Michael Silberman,the magazine’s GM, Digital Media, explained more to me last week. Michael said that as a print publication, New York was unlikely toever have a large staff devoted to video production (it currently hasjust one dedicated person). However, the New York team has beenwatching broadband video’s surging popularity and wanted to capitalizeon this by making video an integral part of its web site. A key goalwas to cost-effectively bulk up the volume of video it offered. Thatled the team to focus on how to aggregate and intelligently curatevideo from other sources so that the magazine’s sensibility would bemaintained. And all of this needed to be done in a “Hulu-like” userexperience with accurately tagged videos presented in a logical flow. In a prior post aboutTaste of Home magazine, I wrote about curation and how it can be apowerful editorial lever for print publishers’ sites that have leanvideo budgets. The reality is that there is a lot of really interestingvideo being created that would be quite valuable to mainstreampublications. In the Internet era, timeliness and omnipresence areimportant calling cards. Tapping into video-enabled readers, who oftenfind themselves at the right place at the right time with theircellphones, digital cameras and Flips on hand, can produce real valueif incorporated the right way. Curation has been a mantra of Steve Rosenbaum, CEO and founder of Magnify.net, which I originally profiled here.The company has been continuously augmenting its video platformfeatures while maintaining a focus on curation as a differentiator.This clearly paid off with the New York win; Michael said that of allthe video platform companies it investigated, Magnify was the only onethat could fully support its curation objectives. He also citedMagnify’s robust customization tools using mainly CSS and Javascriptthat allowed his team to migrate the entire video section over in just5 weeks. New York plans to bring on a producer who will, among other things,run the curation process. No doubt there will be plenty oftrial-and-error in the hunts for and includes appropriate 3rd partyvideo, including users’ submissions. But as I explained in the Taste ofHome post, curation’s potential suggests the emergence of a neweditorial model for video that is particularly relevant in thesepenny-pinching economic times. It’s the kind of break-from-traditionthat may be jolting to editorial purists, but which reflects pragmatic- and strategic - thinking about how print publications can evolve andsucceed in the broadband video era.
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