Mygazines.com closes its doors

Author: Gareth Halfacree
Published: 20th October 2008

The message on the mygazines.com homepage hopefully asks publishers wanting to voluntarily go digital to get in touch with the founders.

The first rule of life is that if something seems to good to be true, it usually isn't: alas, this seems all too accurate for magazine sharing site mygazines.com.

As we reported back in August, mygazines.com was a recent startup which aimed to offer a Flash-powered interactive magazine service – you could literally read a magazine right there in your browser, complete with turning pages. The problems started when the company decided to eschew agreements with content publishers and instead encourage users to scan in copies of magazines to make available to the rest of the userbase – a sort of Napster for magazines, if you will.

Despite the fact that the adverts – the very lifeblood of a magazine – were kept intact, many publishers were understandably annoyed at mygazines.com's attempt to profit off their back and promised to get the company shut down. It appears that the publishers have finally got their wish, with a message on the company's homepage spotted by Wired announcing its immediate closure.

According to the website, the closure comes not as the result of legal action from content publishers but rather from “monetary reasons and the state of the global economy,” with the company claiming that it has simply run out of funds and can no longer cover the cost of daily operations. Despite this, the founders haven't given up yet – the message asks hopefully for publishers that are “interested in understanding more about our model and vision for the future of the publishing industry going forward, or to discuss our Business to Business model opportunities” to e-mail the company.

Did anyone actually use mygazines.com after they were threatened legally, or are there some things which just don't transition to the digital realm all that well? Share your thoughts over in the forums.