Custom Publishing The Time Warner Way
April 18, 2009
Custom publishing is tricky business. First, there’s the database that contains the customer particulars. Then there is the input file that contains the customer preferences. And there are algorithms that take customer preferences and match them with content that is “ready” for the publication. Then there are pesky variables such as an advertiser who pulls out creating a copy hole which may be filled with a public service ad or a bit of scintillating prose that was chopped to fit text around the paying customers’ messages. You have arts and crafts people poking around. You have some legal eagles getting worry lines over rights. The fact checkers scurry about fretting that the inevitable errors are not going to slip through their 20 something fingers. And so on.
Lots of moving parts.
According to Fast Company here, Time Warner had a vision of cranking out customized magazines. Now there are companies who have the work flow and the systems to deliver this type of service. Most of my readers will be uninterested in companies like InfoPrint, Exstream Software, and StreamServe, among others. There are the outfits who put in a car payment, a reminder for a coupon, info about your model’s most recent recall, and other items intended to make you believe that the financial institution holding your loan cares about you and your vehicle. Dead tree outfits don’t use these types of systems. A whole ecosystem of publishing software companies create custom publishing systems that deliver personalized content to whizzy digital presses.
“Time’s Printed RSS Feed Magazine Needs Debugging, Ad Blocking” by Ariel Schwartz wrote:
A number of the magazine’s 31,000 subscribers received content intended for other subscribers (i.e. In Style fans ended up with Sports Illustrated content). Time Inc. spokespeople say that the glitch was the result of a computer error. To make matters worse, many of the stories picked by the project’s editors were up to two years old–something that Time Inc. claims was done on purpose since it “was never the intent for this to be a breaking news vehicle,” and that future issues will have more recent content.
So what went wrong? Many slips twixt cup and lip. I would wager a crust of bread on the margin of my mine run off pond that the Time Warner managers have convinced themselves that the problem was an anomaly and won’t happen again. Life was easier when content was cast in lead and legions of specialists created the weekly. Those bits and bytes are tricky beasts.
Stephen Arnold, April 18, 2009
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