From: Eric Murray <ericm@lne.com>
Date: Mon, 28 Oct 1996 07:34:10 -0800 (PST)
To: rah@shipwright.com (Robert Hettinga)
Subject: Re: considering internet/privacy periodical
In-Reply-To: <v03007804ae9a53374232@[206.119.69.46]>
Message-ID: <199610281533.HAA00656@slack.lne.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


Robert Hettinga writes:
> 
> At 10:31 pm -0500 10/27/96, Timothy C. May wrote:
> > No doubt "Wired" the magazine is doing well
> > (though not amongst many of _us_, it would seem--or at least that we
> > _admit_ here), but apparently "HotWired" and "Suck" and all the rest are
> > having trouble finding their niche. Ditto for Michael Kinsley's
> > massively-touted "Slate." And a bunch of other such Web rags (no pun
> > intended, but it's not a bad one, eh?).
> 
> Actually, the report I heard on "Marketplace", NPR's business report, said
> that the market looked at the fact that Wired was more magazine than
> internet, and killed the deal, twice now. Magazine publishing is a known
> quantity, and a pretty much marginal one, too, with all the competition for
> shelfspace and mindshare in the modern magazine business. Wired lost, if I
> remember the story right, $10mil last year.

Hmm.  From what I hear from publishing industry people, the magazine
part is making a lot of money, and the other parts of wIrEd is pissing
it all away... the MSNBC people, with whom wIrEd is supposed to
do a show, are pissed off at them because the wIrEd people don't
understand video production and are wasting huge amounts of time.

> It seems to me that a magazine
> successful enough to do an IPO should have actually made money before the
> stock floats. 

That's true of most IPOs. :-)

Wired problem is that they beleive their own hype.  They also think
that everything that they touch will be as successful as the magazine, which
set all kinds of records in the publishing industry for how fast it
became profitable and got advertising $$$.

However the real problem with the IPO is that Louis Rosetto sent
a 'rah rah' email to employees (all 330 of them), telling them how
great wIrEd is and how much money they're all going to make, which
got leaked out and posted on the Well among other places.  Unfortunately
for him, this is the 'quiet period' before the IPO where SEC regs
say that the company officers can't make huge glowing pronouncements
about their company.  Oops.


-- 
Eric Murray  ericm@lne.com  ericm@motorcycle.com  http://www.lne.com/ericm
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