The Next Step

If you haven't heard of FLYP yet, well you're a little behind, but here it is. It's a new wave of media that, in my opinion, is best utilizing the power of broadband and interactive applications. Several newspapers and magazines have dabbled with this but FLYP is definitely taking the world of online media in a new direction.
As much as I hate the phrase "thinking outside the box," the people who created this site are so far outside the box that they have created a new box. All the content on the site is typical of new magazines; little politics, little sports, nice personality feature, things that are generally fun to read. But FLYP takes those stories and turns them into something of an experience.
Traditionally, magazines' web pages consisted of navigation bars and helpful links to take readers to information that they deemed valuable. There isn't necessarily anything wrong with this but the site quickly becomes a database for articles and statistics rather than something you sit down and read through.
So the challenge is to keep readers who enjoying sitting down with a magazine happy even though you are moving online.
There are a few things that I think are valuable about rising to the challenge. For one I think your readers are going to be happier with the final product. FLYP is so different from every other online magazine that its readers remember it and spread the word.
FLYP has another leg up on its competitors given that it is much easier to spend a long time looking through pages. Other sites let you search, find your data, and be done with it but FLYP keeps you turning to new pages. I didn't see any advertising on the pages of FLYP but when the time comes to advertise FLYP knows readers spend more time actually looking at their page.
The funny thing about FLYP is that it isn't that much different from a normal magazine. They took what they already know how to do and just moved it online. Yes, they have added flash, video, and sound but generally all the layouts look and feel like a magazine. They are making the digital transition the right way.