The Internet will enable the creation of "virtual magazines."

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Like a record label in the music business or a gallery in the art world, a magazine ultimately owes its existence to its ability to match content to tastes.  Its core business is to obtain material that people with a given set of tastes are likely to enjoy (whether by hiring staff writers, selecting appropriate freelance materials, or both), and then to make people aware the product is out there and available.

There is no reason why this function cannot be performed online by more people. 

With online publishing, the barriers to entry are significantly lowered.  It is not necessary to hire a full-time staff, cultivate independent writers, arrange to have the product displayed on newsstands, or pay large sums for printing and postage. 

The simplest form of “virtual magazine” can be created just by recommending a given set of written material, utilizing the same online service by which other taste mavens will soon begin recommending online music or paintings. 

A more polished product requires little more than a home page with links to various articles, which exist on pages of their own.

It will not be necessary for a virtual magazine to actually own any of the content it recommends.  Not only is linking to other web content a proper and accepted practice on the Internet, there is a solid economic reason for the content’s owners to want as much traffic to it as possible.  Traffic increases the revenue that can be obtained from advertising, or in a paid environment, from pay-per-click fees.

The ability to be found in multiple virtual magazines at the same time can be of particular benefit to writers.  Instead of agonizing over which publication to submit their work to, they can publish it themselves on the Web, then make as many virtual magazines as possible aware of its existence, to gain multiple links that maximize their traffic-based revenues.

More important, more writers and their work can finally reach readers, once virtual publishers and other online taste mavens eliminate the content “gatekeeper” bottleneck.

© COPYRIGHT 2004 ROBERT WINTER.  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.