Interview with Conde Nast Insider

I’ve known Patrick Richardson since kindergarten. We were roommates all through college, and after we graduated from LSU, he moved to New York and I moved to New Orleans. He is currently the Deputy Managing Editor at Conde Nast. Like I mentioned earlier, the first thing I did when I read about the Reddit acquisition was contact Patrick. I decided to have a longer discussion with him today about Conde Nast’s, and their continued growth online.

From the start, Patrick admits that he wasn’t aware of the Reddit story until I brought up, but he was able to provide some insight into Conde’s life online. Patrick coordinates communication between editors offline and online Web editors. I asked him about cross pollination between the magazine and the Web site. He said that there’s definitely more of that happening, specifically magazines paying more attention to their Web sites—and not just at Conde Nast, but within the industry as a whole.

He said magazines have stories that jump from the magazine to the Web site, and their Web editors are generating more and more exclusive content for their Web sites. There’s more happening on some sites than on others, but overall the trend is increasing towards more interaction online, particularly with blogs and Web applications.

All of the Conde sites I visited incorporated tons of blogging, videos and interactive content. It should come as no surprise that magazines are increasing their online presence, but what surprised me was the fact that they are incorporating web apps that encourage and reward user interaction.Although Reddit is one of the first apps acquired from the outside, Self.com, their health and fitness publication, created Your Total Body Makeover where “more than 150,000 women followed Reach Your Goal last year for shape-up success.” Similar apps on Glamour.com and Allure.com assist readers in fashion make-overs.

He said that their Web team is constantly developing tools and publication processes that enable their editors to easily publish content to the Web. When asked if he felt that Conde’s corporate culture was very competitive with other magazines, he replied by saying that Conde Nast always strives to achieve the gold standard in both magazine and online publication, and will continue to do so in Web 2.0.

While it’s apparent that Conde Nast, and the magazine industry at large, is still figuring this stuff out (like the rest of us), they will undoubtedly win in this space. Whether in a magazine or online, they will figure it out because their first priority has always been to create a destination for their readers. And really, isn’t that what we’re all trying to do?