• Nashville’s Band of Outsiders | New York Times
  Quote from Ann Patchett - I live in Nashville and I don’t listen to country music. It is not such an uncommon state of affairs. (This piece echos lots of what I’ve written in this blog on the topic.)
  (tags: music nashville)

If you’re counting, I think the Trump magazine that will be announced on Tuesday will be the third (or maybe fourth) magazine with that name attached to it. Like the other Trump magazines, this one will be “a magazine devoted to ways to spend a great deal of money.” And while it will be distributed in the same Trump properties, it’s not the same Trump magazine that was distributed in all the Trump properties from 2004 until earlier this year. This one will be different, because it will also be sold at the news stand for $5.95.

Wait a minute. According to the New York Times, this new Trump magazine will, according to its publisher, “do stories on private jets, the interiors of the new jets, new lines of Louis Vuitton luggage, Mikimoto pearls, stories on very high-end jewelry like Cartier, travel around the world, golf clubs, fashion…It’s definitely aimed at the reader who doesn’t have to ask how much it costs.”

So why wouldn’t they price it at $9.95? Or $50.95?

$5.95 seems awfully cheap for readers who don’t have to ask how much it costs.

If the news that Microsoft is investing $300-$500 million in Facebook to acquire a 5% stake in the company sounds familiar, it may be because it sounds similar to the 2005 Google investment of $1 billion for a 5% stake in AOL. The investment will secure a boat-load of advertising inventory for Microsoft (or Google, as, according to the Wall Street Journal, Google is also interested in investing in Facebook.) The Google investment in 2005 gave AOL a $20 billion valuation. At $500 million, the rumored MS investment would give Facebook a $10 billion valuation.

This morning, during a Folio: Show panel regarding magazine company developments on the web, Ted Nadeau, general manager of CondéNet, said the Conde Nast unit is stealthily testing applications on Facebook. Nadeau said, “The (Facebook platform) capabilities are impressive and with just a couple of developers, you can grow a pretty amazing application. We are experimenting — and you may not even know it is us when you use it.”

When asked for an example of such stealth Facebook application development, Nadeau told the audience the Facebook application, “What are you wearing?” is one. Sure enough, if you look at the application, there is no mention that the application has anything to do with a multi-billion dollar media giant. Rather, it’s from “WRUW” and the developer is “Paul Wells” of Oregon. Diana Erskine, a member of the Condé Nast network, answers questions on the application discussion board.

The application has 1,722 daily active users (3% of total). Is that successful?

I guess we’ll learn one day if that WRUW gets replaced with the name, “Style.com.”

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