SAN FRANCISCO – Time Inc. is closing high-tech magazine Business 2.0, abandoning efforts to salvage a publication that survived the dot-com bust only to be doomed by the rise of Internet advertising.
Although the San Francisco-based magazine’s death notice wasn’t delivered until Wednesday in a staff meeting, Business 2.0’s troubles were widely known. The magazine’s total advertising pages plunged 34 percent during the first six months of this year, according to statistics compiled by the Publishers Information Bureau.
Like many other print periodicals, Business 2.0 has been hurt by a shift of advertising to the Internet as consumers spend more of their time surfing the Web and less reading magazines and newspapers.
As Business 2.0’s revenue shriveled, Time – part of Time Warner Inc. – had been seeking buyers for the magazine. Dissatisfied with the offers it received in recent weeks, Time decided pull the plug and transfer some of the 9-year-old magazine’s top employees to the company’s main business title, Fortune.
“We looked for the best scenario for Business 2.0 – one that would nurture the spirit of the brand’s unique coverage and reporting,” said Time spokeswoman Danielle Perissi.
Business 2.0’s final issue is scheduled to hit the newsstands this month.
Fortune offered jobs to Josh Quittner, Business 2.0’s editor since 2002, and 10 other employees, Perissi said. The magazine’s remaining 18 workers will lose their jobs, although Time is looking for positions for them at some of its other magazines.
Business 2.0 was among a cluster of specialty magazines that sprang up in San Francisco and nearby Silicon Valley during the 1990s to cover the high-tech boom that were fueled by advertising from brash Internet startups promising to change the world.
To get their ambitious messages out, dot-com entrepreneurs poured millions of dollars of venture capital into advertising while mature high-tech companies joined the mania by boosting their marketing budgets. Besides Business 2.0, the advertising blitz enriched the Industry Standard, Red Herring and Upside.
The tide turned in 2001 when the flow of venture capital dried up. The downturn wiped out the Industry Standard, Upside and Red Herring, which has since been revived under a new owner.
Business 2.0 appeared headed for the scrap heap in 2001, too, until Time bought it for a reported $68 million and folded its own high-tech magazine, eCompany Now, into Business 2.0.
Although it weathered the dot-com bust, Business 2.0 never again approached the advertising heights of the boom.
The magazine ended up with a paid readership of just more than 600,000, according to the latest figures from the Audit Bureau of Circulations. Some of those readers were loyal enough to form a Business 2.0 support group on the social network Facebook.com, but that show of affection wasn’t enough to spare the magazine.
