Tag: Time Magazine

Remembering Late Stage Gawker

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I have an obsessive personality and I was obsessed with Gawker for a long time. I was really important to me during a dark moment in my life and I was grateful for its little sparkle in an otherwise dark world I was living in

And, yet, all good things must come to an end, so my fondness for the site faded over the years to the point that I was just disgusted with how…boring it was.

This doesn’t even include the strange editorial decisions the site was doing on a regular basis. I mean, did they really need to put a graphic phot of a man with hedge clippers stuck through his face?

But back to the being boring part.

The site was just running on — spiteful — fumes by the time it was driven out of business by a equally spiteful lawsuit.

But at its height, I really did enjoy the site. And it makes me think about how profoundly the media environment has changed over the decades. I consume all my media now through a passive bubble of Twitter / Bluesky / Threads and YouTube.

That’s it.

It has to be really compelling for me to get anywhere near the online version of a print publication, much less actually read the print publication in the real world.

I have long thought that the way to fix this problem would be to turn Time, say, into an app of some sort. Make it so you have a reason to never leave Time’s branded content in some way.

But, alas, that moment in time has gone. Fair well, Gawker.

V-Log: How To Save Time Magazine

by Shelton Bumgarner
@sheltbumgarner

In this v-log, I talk about my vision for “saving” Time Magazine by turning it into an app. I love this concept, I just wish someone would listen to me.

V-Log: A Deep Dive Into Saving Time Magazine By Turning It Into A ‘Twitter Killer’ App #Disrupt

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

No one listens to me, but this is a really compelling concept. The idea of turning the legacy brand Time Magazine into an app that would compete — and ultimately kill — Twitter is really cool. And on the face of it, it’s pretty obvious. What you do is, you use the existing content creation backend infrastructure of the magazine to start the app.

There’s just so much to talk about. I talk about all of it pretty extensively in this video. But, like I said, no one listens to me and I’m just pissing in the wind. But it is fun to talk about. I just wish someone with some power at Time Magazine might at least listen to me.

V-Log: Monetization Of The Transition Of Time Magazine Into A ‘Twitter Killer’ App #Disrupt

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

This is an interesting talk. Enjoy.

V-Log: Re-Imagining Time Magazine As A ‘Twitter Killer’ App #Disrupt

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

I guess why I keep writing about this concept is it’s so obvious to me. I’m something of a “power user” of Twitter and I kind of hate it. It sucks. The reason it sucks is, really, only about 10% of its user base is worth anything. So given that Time Magazine has been bought by a technology company, it seems pretty obvious to me that if you’re going to “save” it, you turn it into a social media platform designed to fell Twitter.

There’s just so much you can do with this concept. For me, the crux of it all is if you base the service on the old Usenet platform’s concepts, it make a lot of sense. Now, Reddit is a lot like Usenet, but it’s such a poorly designed implementation of Usenet as to be useless, at least in my opinion.

But here are the basics of my re-imagined Time Magazine.

Groups
Existing writers and editors of Time Magazine, instead of putting a magazine out every week, would be paid, in essence, to contribute content into the service in Groups they would be responsible for. Given that they would be paid to use the service, they would have a reason to be willing to take the time and effort to manage these Groups as systadmins. They would — at least at first — have the exclusive ability to create new Groups. Later, as a Point system kicked in, other people might be able to bubble up to the surface of the system and also be able to serve as systadims. But that would take time.

Posts
This is one cool feature — instead of being limited to 280 characters people using the Time App would have an entire full-page, multimedia Post to write content into. These Posts would have a robust threading quality to them, as well as the ability for users to in-line edit them once they had proven that they weren’t completely insane. (How they might prove this is up to discussion. I think at first it would be simply the amount of time you had used the service or whatever. Something intuitive.)

Video Conferencing
Another cool feature would be the ability to have recorded 4-way video conferencing. If you limited this feature, at least at first, to Time App staff, then you wouldn’t have to worry about abuse.

Anyway, there is so much more I could talk about, but no one listens to me. But, like I said, this is so obvious to me. It just makes so much sense. The user base of Twitter is in near open revolt and if you gave them a better mouse trap, I think they would flock to it in droves. I know a lot of celebrities and thought leaders hate Twitter with a passion. If you gave them something like my proposed “Time App” I think they would love it from the get-go.

V-Log: Saving Time Magazine By Turning It Into A ‘Twitter Killer’ App #Disrupt

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

There’s just so much you can do with Time Magazine’s content. It has a great name and it generates huge amounts of content on a minute-by-minute basis. So, why not use its editors and writers as the core of a new social media app and Website, one that could “kill” Twitter.

I mean, really, Twitter is completely useless and only about 10% of its user base produces any content that anyone wants to read. So what would happen if you started off from the ground up a new service where at first only the editors and writers of Time Magazine could contribute into the system full page, multimedia posts that were in different Groups devoted to thousands of different topics?

Now, I’m basing all of this in a very loose way on the old Usenet newsgroups. But to the modern user, I guess they would see it as kind of a mixture of Twitter and Reddit. What happens is, you seed the service will Time Magazine staff, then gradually, over time, others would build up enough “points” that they could also do administrative things.

It’s pretty widely known that most people — especially celebrities and other thought leaders — hate, hate, HATE Twitter for any number of reasons and I think if you gave them a viable alternative they would flock to it. There is just so much you could do with this premise. You could have recorded video conferencing, you name it.

But no one listens to me, so I’m just pissing in the wind. But this is such an obvious yet out-of-the-box use of Time Magazine staff and content it’s kind of sad that no one will do anything with this concept.

My Vision For Time Magazine: Turn It Into A ‘Twitter Killer’ App Based On Usenet Concepts

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

Of all the legacy media brands that could be used to destroy Twitter, Time Magazine is at the top of the list. The reason is simple — Time Magazine has a major problem and so does Twitter. Time produces a lot of great content, but it’s based on the cycle of a weekly magazine. Meanwhile, Twitter’s problem is even more systemic. Not only is about 10% of Twitter content the only thing worth anything, but it is extremely poorly designed when it comes to what people have come to use it for: having a discussion.

So, with that in mind, I propose that Time’s new owner, Marc Benioff, completely re-imagine Time Magazine as a publication from the ground up. What you do is, take the very core of what makes Twitter popular — writers and editors talking to each other in a public form — and use all the existing writers and editors of Time as the core of an app (and Website) based on the concepts of the long-ago Usenet.

Now, there are some basic flaws with this concept that would have to be managed. Chief among them being how do you scale the concepts of Usenet into the millions? I propose these problems are fixed in several ways. One, you are paying people to essentially post full-time into a discussion app, you can give them a lot more sysadmin control than you might otherwise. They would have a vested interest in curating their “newsgroups” that they were responsible for. Each writer and editor would have any number of newsgroups, or Groups, that they were responsible for. No need for a hierarchy like Usenet once had. You would have redundant Groups focused more an editor or writer than whatever subject.

Meanwhile, if you limited who could post to any particular group, that would greatly control the number of posts into any particular group and as such aid in scaleability. In affect what you would have is discussion of the massive amounts of content generated by Time Magazine native to the content itself. In other words, given that you would have full-page threaded posts in Groups and those Posts would have inline editing, you would give readership an unexpected to date unprecedented since of empowerment. The ability for people to inline edit content from Time Magazine in threaded discussions via an app would be something a lot of readers would enjoy.

Let me be absolutely clear — I know this sounds a lot like Reddit. That comes more from Reddit being a poorly implemented version of Usenet than it does what I suggest is simply Time Magazine copying Reddit. It seems to me that something like turning Time Magazine into an app is just the thing to not only save the magazine, but “kill” Twitter.

Shelton Bumgarner is a writer and photographer living in Richmond, Va. He may be reached at migukin (at) gmail (dot) com.

V-Log: ‘The Picture’ — I’m Furious About Trump’s Dumb Attack On Time Magazine

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

I know no one ever watched v-logs, but this one is worth your time. It’s not even really a v-log, more of a live stream rant.

How To Use Time Magazine As The Core Of A ‘Twitter Killer’ #startup

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

The word on the street is that Time, Fortune and Sports Illustrated are for sale. Rather than let some insane Right wing nutjob buy them and turn them into a mainstream Brietbart, why not do something really innovative. Why not think outside the box and turn those the writers and editors of those three publications into something really unique.

The thing about Twitter is a lot of really powerful writers and editors use it as some sort of public salon where they sit around and talk about issues of the day. What if you designed a “Twitter Killer” made up of Time and its sister publications that had a similar purpose to Twitter but was much, much better.

It seems so obvious. It would be really cool and I feel it would be a near instant hit. What you do is you completely re-imagine Time. You accept that the the print magazine is doomed and have all the content that the magazine’s writers and editors otherwise produce dumped into your new Twitter Killer.

You could also use those very same writers as the seed group of users. They would invite their friends as you grew the service and it would help the service star off on the right foot. This is such an obvious application of Time that I don’t understand why someone with a lot of money doesn’t run with it.

Twitter sucks so bad that if you did as I suggest, it would be quite popular, quite quickly I believe. As I keep suggesting, you design the service by leaning on the concepts of Usenet from 20 years ago. But no one listens to me and the social media space isn’t exactly bumping anymore. People with all the money are too interested in AR, VR and automation to worry about something so blase.

But I really do like the concept. It’s really strong.

How To Save Time Magazine & ‘Disrupt’ Both Publishing & Social Media

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

Let me be a bit more clear about all of this. So Time Magazine is up for sale. What if instead of letting some Right wing nutjob buy it and ruin it, you completely thought outside the box and re-invented it as a social media platform.

Here me out.

What you do is, move Time Magazine from New York City to Silicon Valley and make it a startup. The startup would be designed specifically to compete with Twitter, but you might be able to figure out a way to go after Facebook as well.

You use all the editors and writers for Time Magazine as your seed group of users. Instead of publishing a magazine each week, they would post content into the service. I think you should lean heavily on the concepts associated with Usenet from 20 years ago, but that’s just me.

Anyway, the point is, all those editors and writers would be the core of a Twitter Killer. They would then to invite other “thought leaders” into the service as part of your growth marketing plan and soon enough you could have something much cooler than Twitter that you could leverage to attack Facebook which is having some serious problems right now.

Let me be clear that no one listens to me, but this is fun to think about for a moment.