Vanity Fair magazine put out its high-profile “New Establishment” list of the top 50 people, who are “an innovative new breed of buccaneering visionaries, engineering prodigies, and entrepreneurs, who quite often sport hoodies, floppy hair, and backpacks.”

The hoodie part would be referring to Facebook CEO and co-founder Mark Zuckerberg, who topped the list — which is in the just-released October issue — for the second year in a row.

The Vanity Fair list was packed with Silicon Valley luminaries.

The No. 2 spot went to the hopelessly conjoined twins at Google, CEO Larry Page and his co-founder Sergey Brin. Amazon’s Jeff Bezos was No. 3, followed by newly born CEO Tim Cook and top product guy Jonathan Ive of Apple at No. 4, with Twitter creator and Square founder Jack Dorsey at No. 5.

Interestingly, super-VCs Mark Andreessen and Ben Horowitz clocked in this year at No. 6.

The digitally fast-forward Lady Gaga was the top woman on the list at No. 9, in front of “Harry Potter” author J. K. Rowling at No. 16.

And, clocking in at No. 40? Why, me and my partner-in-crime at AllThingsD, Walt Mossberg. He is apparently a “kingmaker” of tech and I do “juicy exclusives.”

That actually is pretty accurate. More importantly, we were ranked higher than Justin Timberlake and Ashton Kutcher. In other words: Mission accomplished!

We also beat the Angry Birds dudes at No. 49, whom my two kids would nonetheless have voted tops over their mom any day of the week and twice on Sunday.

In addition, Vanity Fair broke off a list of 25 “Powers That Be,” which is made up of a lot of longtime “New Establishment” folks, as well as another list called the “Hall of Fame.”

“These are the people who have shaped the world we live in today — and continue to wield enormous influence,” said Vanity Fair, which translates into dustier moguls.

Topping the powers-that-be, of course, is Apple’s co-founder and Chairman Steve Jobs. And outgone Google CEO and now Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt is now enshrined in the hall of fame.

As Walt and I head to a good table at the Minetta Tavern to meet the cool peeps for a celebratory drink, here is the official press releases from Vanity Fair:

FACEBOOK FOUNDER MARK ZUCKERBERG TOPS VANITY FAIR’S NEW ESTABLISHMENT LIST FOR THE SECOND YEAR IN A ROW

Sergey Brin and Larry Page Take No. 2 Spot, Lady Gaga Jumps to the Top 10 of Tech-Dominant List

NEW YORK, N.Y. — “The Age of Information gives way to a burgeoning Age of Technology,” announces Graydon Carter, remarking on the “seismic shift in interest and influence” that has occurred in the 17 years that Vanity Fair has been ranking America’s power players. The magazine’s 2011 New Establishment list identifies the top 50 of an innovative new breed of buccaneering visionaries, engineering prodigies, and entrepreneurs, who quite often sport hoodies, floppy hair, and backpacks.

Mark Zuckerberg, founder of the inescapable social-networking site Facebook, maintains his perch at the top of Vanity Fair’s 17th annual New Establishment List ranking for the second year in a row. With a possible I.P.O. on the horizon by 2012, which could value the company anywhere between $50 and $100 billion, Facebook has enough clout to worry even the unshakable Google. Zuckerberg is still the youngest person ever to top the list.

Sergey Brin and Larry Page, co-founders of Google, are in the No. 2 spot this year, closing in on Zuckerberg as they jump up one spot, from No. 3 in 2010. Eric Schmidt, who appeared on the list last year with the duo, has since been pushed out of the C.E.O’s office, replaced by Page. Despite reports of an anti-trust investigation, Google has been setting its sites on Facebook by concentrating on strategic initiatives, such as engineering social-networking features.

Rounding out the top five are Jeff Bezos, of Amazon, at No. 3, Tim Cook and Jonathan Ive, of Apple, at No. 4, and Twitter and Square founder Jack Dorsey, at No. 5.

Lady Gaga makes an appearance for the second year in a row. Coming in at No. 9, she is the highest-ranking woman on the list, in front of J. K. Rowling at No. 16, Sheryl Sandberg, of Facebook, at No. 26, Angela Ahrendts with Christopher Bailey, of Burberry, at No. 30, Natalie Massenet at No. 32, and Kara Swisher with Walt Mossberg at No. 40. At 25 years old, Gaga is also the youngest person on the list — not a surprise for someone whose fans managed to crash Amazon’s servers in their desperation to download her third album.

Youthful energy is spread throughout this year’s list with 15 members under the age of 40, including Zuckerberg, Brin and Page, Dorsey, Lady Gaga, Andrew Mason, Sean Parker, Ryan Kavanaugh, Jeremy Stoppelman, Ashton Kutcher, Dennis Crowley, Daniel Ek, Mikael Hed and Niklas Hed, and Justin Timberlake.

There are 14 billionaires on the list: Zuckerberg, Brin and Page, Bezos, Mark Pincus, Michael Moritz, J. K. Rowling, Jim Breyer, Reid Hoffman, Herbert Allen III, Yuri Milner, Robin Li, Parker, and Peter Thiel.

Five member of the New Establishment are actively involved in space exploration, including Brin, Elon Musk, Bezos, Thiel, and Dennis Crowley. Eight of the New Establishment nominees can count themselves members of the ever growing Stanford Mafia; they include Brin, Page, Reed Hastings, Jim Breyer, Hoffman, Musk, Thiel, and John Hennessy.

The New Establishment, Vanity Fair’s annual ranking of the top leaders of our time, is made up of owners, creators, buyers, thinkers, and innovators — the movers and shakers in the worlds of technology, media, business, politics, entertainment, and fashion. These men and women are the taste-makers and trendsetters, opinion formers and agenda creators, not to mention empire builders. Entry into the ranks of Vanity Fair’s list is based on a number of factors: wealth, influence, and philanthropy, as well as such intangibles as vision and the x factor.

The October issue of Vanity Fair will be on newsstands in New York and L.A. on September 1, and nationally and on the iPad September 6.

THE VANITY FAIR NEW ESTABLISHMENT

1. Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook
2. Sergey Brin and Larry Page, Google
3. Jeff Bezos, Amazon
4. Tim Cook and Jonathan Ive, Apple
5. Jack Dorsey, Square, Twitter
6. Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz, Andreessen Horowitz
7. Reed Hastings, Netflix
8. John Lasseter, Pixar, Walt Disney Animation Studios
9. Lady Gaga, singer
10. Dan Doctoroff, Bloomberg L.P.
11. Dick Costolo, Twitter
12. Mark Pincus, Zynga
13. Jim Breyer, Accel Partners
14. Tim Burton, Johnny Depp, and Graham King, Movies
15. Michael Moritz, Sequoia Capital
16. J. K. Rowling, Harry Potter
17. Trey Parker and Matt Stone, South Park
18. Reid Hoffman, Greylock Partners, LinkedIn
19. Herb Allen III, Allen & Co.
20. Judd Apatow, Apatow Productions
21. Jay-Z, Roc Nation
22. Todd Phillips, Green Hat Films
23. Yuri Milner, DST Global
24. J. J. Abrams, writer, director, producer
25. Robin Li, Baidu
26. Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook
27. Andrew Mason, Groupon
28. Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, television
29. Mark Wahlberg and Stephen Levinson, Leverage
30. Angela Ahrendts and Christopher Bailey, Burberry
31. Elon Musk, Tesla Motors, Space X
32. Natalie Massenet, Net-a-Porter Group
33. Paul Graham, Y Combinator
34. Sean Parker, entrepreneur
35. Fred Wilson, Union Square Ventures, Flatiron Partners
36. Peter Thiel, Founders Fund, Clarium Capital Management
37. Peter Jackson, Wingnut Films
38. Ryan Kavanaugh, Relativity Media
39. Mike Allen, Politico
40. Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher, All Things D
41. John Hennessy, Stanford University
42. Jeremy Stoppelman, Yelp
43. Ashton Kutcher, actor, investor
44. Tyler Perry, director, producer, writer, actor
45. Dennis Crowley, Foursquare
46. Kevin Ryan, Gilt Groupe
47. Daniel Ek, Spotify
48. Henry Blodget, Business Insider
49. Mikael Hed, Niklas Hed, and Peter Vesterbacka, Rovio
50. Justin Timberlake, singer, actor

STEVE JOBS HOLDS THE TOP SPOT ON VANITY FAIR’S LIST OF THE POWERS THAT BE

Embattled News Corp. Chairman Rupert Murdoch in the Top 5

NEW YORK, N.Y. — This year Vanity Fair inaugurates a list of the Powers That Be. These are the people who have shaped the world we live in today — and continue to wield enormous influence. Many are longtime New Establishment members, and their destinies are intertwined with the members of this year’s New Establishment.

Steve Jobs, of Apple, holds the top spot on the list of the Powers That Be. Since Jobs took control of the company 14 years ago, the stock’s share price has risen more than 6,500 percent. At the height of the debt crisis in late July, Apple had more cash on hand than the U.S. government.

Bernard Arnault, of luxury-goods company LVMH, ranks in the No. 2 spot. As an overseer of countless enduring luxury brands, Arnault has left his mark on the industry. Last year he spent $2 billion to accumulate a 20 percent stake in family-controlled but publicly traded Hermès.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg is No.3 on this year’s list while News Corporation chairman Rupert Murdoch comes in at No. 4. The tumultuous News of the World scandals this year have shaken the media baron, but also shown his staying power in the face of just about anything. Brian Roberts and Steve Burke, of Comcast, NBCUniversal, who recently acquired the U.S. media rights to the Olympic Games through 2020, are No. 5.

Jill Abramson is the highest-ranking woman out of six on the list, at No. 9. She is followed by Angelina Jolie with Brad Pitt at No. 11, Sue Naegle with Richard Plepler and Michael Lombardo at No. 15, Anne Sweeney with George Bodenheimer at No. 22, Bonnie Hammer at No. 24, and Arianna Huffington with Tim Armstrong at No. 25.

Because some power is permanent, Vanity Fair nominates a number of regulars to the Hall of Fame this year. Warren Buffett, of Berkshire Hathaway, joins Barry Diller and Diane von Furstenberg, Tom Ford, actor Tom Hanks, and designer Karl Lagerfeld. Network impresario Oprah Winfrey, Jeffrey Katzenberg, of DreamWorks Animation, and talk-show host Charlie Rose all make the ranks as well.

The October issue of Vanity Fair will be on newsstands in New York and L.A. on September 1, and nationally and on the iPad September 6.

THE POWERS THAT BE

1. Steve Jobs, Apple
2. Bernard Arnault, LVMH
3. Michael Bloomberg, mayor, New York City
4. Rupert Murdoch, News Corporation
5. Brian Roberts and Steve Burke, Comcast, NBCUniversal
6. François-Henri Pinault, PPR
7. Bob Iger, Walt Disney Company
8. Jeffrey Bewkes, Time Warner
9. Jill Abramson, The New York Times
10. Steve Ballmer, Microsoft
11. Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, movies, philanthropy
12. Diego Della Valle, Tod’s
13. Roman Abramovich, investments
14. Mickey Drexler, J. Crew
15. Richard Plepler, Sue Naegle, and Michael Lombardo, HBO
16. Larry Gagosian, Gagosian Gallery
17. Harvey and Bob Weinstein, the Weinstein Company
18. Marc Jacobs, designer
19. Lorne Michaels, Saturday Night Live
20. David Zaslav, Discovery Communications
21. Jean Pigozzi, investments, art
22. George Bodenheimer and Anne Sweeney, Disney Media Networks
23. Vivi Nevo, NV Investments
24. Bonnie Hammer, NBCU Cable Entertainment and Cable Studios
25. Tim Armstrong and Arianna Huffington, AOL Huffington Post Media Group

HALL OF FAME

Edgar Bronfman Jr., Warner Music Group
Warren Buffett, Berkshire Hathaway
Ron Conway, angel investor
Philippe Dauman, Viacom
Barry Diller and Diane von Furstenberg, IAC, DVF
John Doerr, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers
Larry Ellison, Oracle Corporation
Tom Ford, designer/filmmaker
Ted Forstmann, IMG Worldwide
Tom Freston, Firefly3
Brian Grazer and Ron Howard, Imagine Entertainment
Tom Hanks, actor
Jeffrey Katzenberg, DreamWorks Animation
Vinod Khosla, Khosla Ventures
Karl Lagerfeld, Chanel
Ralph Lauren, Polo Ralph Lauren
John Malone, Liberty Media
Ron Meyer, Universal Studios
Leslie Moonves, CBS
Ronald Perelman, MacAndrews and Forbes
Miuccia Prada, Prada
Charlie Rose, talk-show host
Eric Schmidt, Google
Terry Semel, investor
Oprah Winfrey, OWN

(Full disclosure: Readers who look closely at the list will notice that all things ATD senior editor Peter Kafka is listed as a contributor. This is true! Also true: Peter wrote biographical entries for several people on the list, but has zero input on its composition. He tells us he had no idea that we were being considered for inclusion, and we believe him. He also says that had he been asked for his opinion, he would have voted for us, his bosses, to be included. We also believe that.)

At $4 a pop — via Amazon’s Kindle or Barnes & Nobles’ Nook stores — “Rupert Murdoch, The Master Mogul of Fleet Street” costs less than a single copy of the print magazine.

It’s also a bargain if you’re a fan of Murdoch biographer (and non-baseball expert) Michael Wolff, whose work accounts for 20 percent of the copy here.

In other PhoneGate news, News Corp. has told employees at its New York Post tabloid to “preserve and maintain” any documents related to phone hacking.

News Corp., which also owns this Web site, has maintained that none of the systemic voicemail hacking that has come to light at its News of the World tabloid occurred in the U.S., but investigators will be looking into the matter, regardless.

Hogan will take the spot last occupied by Patricia Chui, who was fired by AOL in April.

Hogan, who starts his new job June 26, will wear multiple hats: His official title is “Executive Features Editor”, and his duties also include running AOL TV. But his initial focus will be on Moviefone, which he wants to overhaul.

“We really want to take it from something that is successful as a ticket selling site, and try to make it into a robust gathering place for people who follow the movie industry and people who love movies,” he said. Hogan said he’ll hire fulltime editors and writers to beef up content on the site.

AOL fired Hogan’s predecessor after she distributed a memo informing Moviefone freelancers that their contracts were ending, but that they could contribute to the site as unpaid volunteers. Chui’s defenders said she had been treated unfairly by AOL, which was in the process of overhauling all of its editorial teams after acquiring the Huffington Post.

Hogan says he’s comfortable that any controversy  surrounding Chui’s departure has dissipated. “I talked to the folks there about that situation, and I understood where everybody was coming from,” he said.

Hogan became editor of VF.com in 2008; his most recent title was executive digital editor. (Disclosure: I’ve done freelance work for Vanity Fair in the past and am working on a project for the magazine now.)

Here’s a farewell bouquet from Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter, via email: “I’ve had the pleasure of watching Michael Hogan hone his editorial skills over the past thirteen years from the assistant’s desk to being head of our digital team. I told him when I moved him to the website, that if he did his job well, he wouldn’t be working for me in three years. He beat the deadline. And he will be missed.”

The allegation is part of a critical portrait in the book of Mr. Gates, with whom Mr. Allen formed a friendship in grade school that evolved into one of the iconic partnerships of American business. The book, “Idea Man: A Memoir by the Co-founder of Microsoft,” is scheduled to go on sale on April 17. A draft of the memoir was viewed by The Wall Street Journal. An excerpt of the book appeared on Vanity Fair’s website early Wednesday.

The book gives a revisionist take on some details of Microsoft’s history and the relationship between Mr. Gates and his former partner, the two of whom have long been viewed as cordial if not close friends.

Read the rest of this post on the original site »

So this one’s a bit of a head-scratcher: Conde Nast is going to raise the prices of two of its tablet titles.

GQ and Vanity Fair used to offer readers who’d already bought a single digital issue a discount on subsequent purchases. But it’s doing away with that next month.

So effectively, loyal readers of  GQ on the iPad will see prices go from $2.99 to $4.99 an issue, while Vanity Fair will go from $3.99 to $4.99.

The move is part of Conde’s decision to move those two titles, along with Glamour, from a digital publishing system it had built itself last year to one from Adobe. That’s the same system Conde already uses to publish Wired magazine and other titles, and it’s the one the publisher chose after a bake-off last fall.

The shift means Conde will stop supporting the existing apps for those three titles at Apple’s iTunes store, and will ask users to download new apps over the coming weeks. Anyone who bought digital versions of the three magazines in the last year will still be able to read them, as long as they’ve downloaded and archived the issues.* And Conde is giving readers a heads up via in-app ads like the one to the left.*

Conde will try to goose sales for Glamour, the first magazine to shift platforms, by cutting the app’s price down to $0.99 for a week starting next Tuesday. Which should be a good way to help the app move to the top of iTunes’ charts — people love cheap apps.

So why push the price back up after that? And why raise prices for the other two titles?

Conde says the platform shift gives the publisher a chance to “reexamine pricing”, and that it now wants to sell all of its digital titles at the same price analog copies command at a newsstand. (Or close to it – both the New Yorker and Wired still sell for a dollar less at iTunes than their paper counterparts).

Which is really a way of saying “boy oh boy would we like to sell subscriptions, because when we do, we’ll offer monthly or yearly committments at a steep discount to individual sales, just like we do with paper copies.”

But that’s not going to be happening at iTunes anytime soon, because none of the big magazine publishers have shown any inclination to accept Apple’s subscription rules — at least for titles they’re already selling in paper form. Meanwhile Conde has announced that it plans to sell its digital magazines for Google’s Android this spring – but has yet to mention subscriptions.

*If you have to reset your machine entirely, though, you’ll be out of luck altogether. Sometimes digital just isn’t as durable as paper and ink.

**The shift also means that anyone who has enjoyed reading Glamour, GQ or Vanity Fair on their iPhone is out of luck. Conde says for the near-term, its new magazine apps will only be formatted for the iPad.

Back in February, the San Francisco company, which was started by Twitter founder Jack Dorsey, said it was signing up 50,000 to 60,000 new users a a month and processing millions of dollars a week.

Earlier last week, Square dropped the rates it charges plumbers, artists and housecleaners to use its services, in order to ramp usage on its network.

It seems to have worked.

Late last night, Dorsey tweeted that “As of today @Square is processing more than $1,000,000 a day. Think of all the individuals & businesses behind that number. Congrats to all!”

Square’s rates are now a flat fee of 2.75 percent per transaction, instead of the previous fees, which charged 2.75 percent plus an additional 15 cents. (The rate for when a credit card number is keyed in, rather than swiped, will remain the same at 3.5 percent plus 15 cents.)

The company’s biggest competitor is Intuit’s GoPayment, which has yet to match the drop. UPDATE: Intuit said that its GoPayment customers are processing $9 million a week using GoPayment and its online and QuickBooks payment services.

Separately, Dorsey was featured today in the April issue of Vanity Fair, which labeled the media-shy man as one of the visionaries of the Digital Age.

The profile traces Dorsey’s time at Twitter as the former CEO and the circumstances of his departure, along with his new ambitions for changing the way we pay for things and the way merchants charge for them.

• When Wired magazine launched on the iPad in June, it racked up more than 100,000 downloads. By November the number dwindled to between 22,000 and 23,000.
• Vanity Fair, which sold about 10,500 iPad downloads in August, saw sales drop to 8,700 in November.
• Glamour saw a 40 percent decline in iPad sales between September, when it sold 4,301 copies, and November, when it sold just 2,775.

There were other declines as well, all helpfully catalogued over at Memo Pad, but you get the idea.

Seems that iPad magazines haven’t yet captured the public’s attention. Why? Overpricing, perhaps. Why pay $5 a pop for a digital copy of a publication you can subscribe to for $10 a year? Of course, the larger issue is the publishing industry’s insistence on using new platforms like the iPad to ape antiquated models like print, when it could be using them to develop entirely new ones. Just because you can arrange a pile of massive image files into a digital magazine doesn’t make it a good one.

The publisher is rolling out its “best practices” for iPad ad makers this morning, via a press release and presentation. Most of this stuff seems like common sense to me: Take advantage of Apple’s (AAPL) device, but make sure readers know how to engage with the ad, etc. But again, it’s the very early days, and if you haven’t spent much time with the tablets, it will be news to you.

Ditto for the other findings in Condé’s research, which I would find more interesting if the publisher put them out in raw data form instead of qualitative assertions. But Condé thinks it’s worth sharing with the outside world. So if you want to take a look, too:

CONDÉ NAST RESEARCH OFFERS KEY CONSUMER INSIGHTS INTO
iPAD DIGITAL MAGAZINE APPLICATION ENGAGEMENT AND EXPECTATIONS

Results pave way for initial recommendation of “5 Best Practices” for advertisers

NEW YORK, October 13, 2010 – Condé Nast, which was the first magazine publisher to offer digital magazines on the iPhone and iPad, released key insights today derived from the first stage of a multi-phase research initiative evaluating consumer engagement. Based on over 100 hours of one-on-one interviews and more than 5,000 in-app surveys this early feedback on overall consumer usability, expectations, and sentiment has shaped initial recommendations on “best practices” for advertisers. Brands included in the study were GQ, Vanity Fair, Wired and Glamour.

Overall iPad and brand experience:
“We continue to see that reader engagement with our digital magazines apps, in terms of time spent, is on par with or exceeds our print editions,” said Scott McDonald, SVP market research, Condé Nast. “We were surprised to find however that many iPad users surveyed were not the typical tech “early adopter” or familiar with Apple products and their navigation conventions. This has very important implications for application interface design.”

Specific to Condé Nast digital magazines, eight in ten reported that the content and experience associated with the brands met or surpassed their expectations, and 83% reported a likelihood to purchase the next month’s digital issue. Eighty-nine percent felt the apps were easy to use and, on the whole, users showed little sensitivity to download times.

It was also noted that users preferred to read the magazines in portrait mode, but chose to watch video in the landscape orientation. There was also an expectation for flexibility in buying options, e.g., a single copy purchase, a digital subscription or supplement to their print subscription.

Advertising:
User recall and enjoyment were the basis for establishing the overall success of a particular ad.

The study showed that readers expected to find ads in digital magazines and expressed that their inclusion was an enhancement to the experience, which is often the case with printed magazines.

“When we initiated our R & D phase, we felt strongly that by choosing a multi-advertiser model for our digital magazines it would enable us to garner some valuable learning that we could pass on to our clients,” said Condé Nast Chief Marketing Officer Lou Cona. “With such a rapidly changing marketplace, we expect behaviors to evolve quickly; however, our initial results enable us to offer clients our five best practices for producing successful digital magazine creative, insights we feel will be helpful as the industry navigates this new medium.”

Condé Nast’s five best practices for creating advertising that will engage and resonate with the user:
1. Take advantage of This New Medium’s functionality: Users responded positively to the additional functionality of the iPad. Therefore advertisers that included compelling and unique experiences, that were self contained and exclusive to the environment, were liked more than those that did not. Increased opportunities for engagement including video, photo galleries and links to websites are recommended.

2. Provide Clear Instructions on How to Engage with Your App: As many surveyed were not familiar with iPad navigation, ads that included clear calls to action and cues on how to engage the creative were more effective. Icons should be clearly visible and intuitive and state whether more content or additional functionality can be found.

3. Supply Additional Information but Avoid Repurposing Creative Assets Used for Other Media: Users enjoyed advertisements that provided something new and useful. Including detailed product info and how-to’s are recommended, however re-purposing video or creative used for other mediums is not suggested.

4. Tell A Story: The most remembered ads contained narratives. The iPad’s ability to showcase various forms of media offers a unique opportunity for telling a brands’ story. However, it was discovered that users became bored when the same advertisement was used repeatedly throughout a single application.

5. Lead Them Down the Purchase Funnel: Brands that enabled a user to directly access and purchase the featured product faired better than companies who offered homepage links alone. It is also recommended that due to compatibility issues, Flash not be used.

This one’s from Glamour, and you can check it out for yourself at iTunes. If you’re very impatient, you can see a promotional video at the bottom of this post.

A quick rundown of things you should know about this one:

• Like Condé’s GQ and Vanity Fair apps, this one was built in-house, as opposed to Condé’s Wired app, which was built with Adobe’s (ADBE) somewhat controversial assistance. Casual readers may not tell the difference, but the performance of the two sets of apps is of intense interest to Condé, which is trying to figure out which way to go. The New Yorker is scheduled to get the Adobe treatment next.
• The app sells for $3.99, the same as the print edition. That could change down the line, because Condé is in R&D mode right now. Condé would also like to sell its own subscriptions for this stuff, but so far, it can’t. Just like every other magazine publisher.
• A new twist for this app: Readers can tap on certain images and get whisked off to a Web page where they can buy the item. Condé doesn’t get a slice of any sale, but that could change down the line.
• Excitement over the iPad goosed ad sales for Glamour’s September issue, which clocks in at 420 pages. That’s the highest total in 23 years. On the flip side, producing the app took real resources, says editor Cindi Leive. “It’s definitely a lot of work, but we’re not complaining. It’s 1,000 percent worth it.”
• Not to put too fine a point on it, but Apple’s (AAPL) App Store, and particularly the iPad department, skews very dude-heavy. This is one of the first iPad apps–and the first magazine app, I believe–built with the ladies in mind.

So, ladies–what do you think?

Advertisers’ exposure in the iPad editions of Condé Nast titles will reflect the level of their investment in the print edition.

All advertisers in the print edition will appear similarly in the iPad’s “landscape” format, which is a replica of the print edition. A select group of advertisers who buy the most pages in that issue of the magazine will get “premium” placement in the iPad edition, meaning their ads will have added features like video and links to the Web. Those ads will appear in the apps’ “portrait” mode, the version of the magazine that includes extra functions like video and slideshows.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

@womensweardaily (Women’s Wear Daily): Master photographer Irving Penn dies at 92. WWD looks back on his career

@Fashionista_com (fashion blog): RIP Irving Penn. You will be so greatly missed.

@vanityfairmag (Vanity Fair magazine): RIP Irving Penn. Here are six covers he did for Vanity Fair in 1983/84

@NARSissist (NARS cosmetics): We’ll miss you Irving Penn….

Read the rest of this post on the original site

It’s not a huge shock to see some of those titles go: Cookie, for instance, wasn’t a prestige title for Condé–like Domino, which the publisher closed down earlier this year, it was founded in 2005.

But Gourmet is one of Condé Nast’s most famous titles, and editor Ruth Reichl is one of Condé’s best-known editors. Most observers would have figured that Bon Appétit would go instead. CEO Chuck Townsend says the Gourmet brand will live on, zombie-style, via TV and publishing deals.

Condé has long cultivated a reputation as the magazine world’s most glamorous outpost, impervious to the petty concerns that bedeviled lesser folk. But the double-punch of the ad industry’s move away from print titles and a recession that pole-axed the luxury brands Condé depends on, has staggered the publisher. (Disclosure: I do some free-lance work for Condé title Vanity Fair).

Signs of trouble showed up late last year when the publisher made uncharacteristic staffing cuts. And in 2009, it began shuttering magazines: In addition to Domino, it closed Portfolio in April, just two years after a high-profile launch.

By July, Townsend had brought on consultants from McKinsey and Company to help figure out where else it could trim; the news that September ad pages would be down anywhere from 17 percent to 47 percent made it clear that other titles would be going.

I wouldn’t expect this to be the last big set of magazine cuts, by the way: Time Warner (TWX), for instance, has made it clear that it wants to hang on to Time Inc. but that it thinks the publisher employs too many people who produce too many titles.

Here are the details on the Condé cuts, via an internal memo (intended for public consumption) from Chuck Townsend:

From: “Townsend, Chuck”
Date: Mon, 5 Oct 2009 10:16:52 -0400
To: Conde Nast Publications-All <_273fee@condenast.com>
Conversation: Announcing Changes within Condé Nast
Subject: Announcing Changes within Condé Nast

We have now completed an extensive review of our business–an important undertaking given the dramatic changes in the U.S. economy. The review has led us to a number of decisions designed to navigate the company through the economic downturn and to position us to take advantage of coming opportunities.

Condé Nast’s success comes from the ability of our publications to attract readers with a wide range of interests, as well as advertisers who value them. But in this economic climate it is important to narrow our focus to titles with the greatest prospects for long-term growth.

As a result of our review, Brides will increase its frequency to monthly to solidify its position as the most important brand in the bridal category, and Modern Bride and Elegant Bride will close.

Gourmet magazine will cease monthly publication, but we will remain committed to the brand, retaining Gourmet’s book publishing and television programming, and Gourmet recipes on Epicurious.com. We will concentrate our publishing activities in the epicurean category on Bon Appétit.

Finally, Cookie magazine will be discontinued, and resources that had been dedicated to its publishing will be invested elsewhere.

The editorial and business staffs of Modern Bride, Elegant Bride, Gourmet, and Cookie all have earned their magazines large and devoted followings. We have been proud to publish these titles, and we are grateful to the staffs for their hard work and dedication.

These changes, combined with cost and workforce reductions now underway throughout the company, will speed the recovery of our current businesses and enable us to pursue new ventures. In the coming weeks, we hope to announce initiatives to develop digital versions of our brands that will make use of new devices and distribution channels.

Condé Nast is now in its 100th year of creating the most respected and iconic brands in the publishing world. These changes will ensure that our unique publishing company will continue in its preeminent position for many years to come.

CEO Chuck Townsend said as much in a memo yesterday announcing that he’d hired McKinsey to figure out how to survive “in an emerging economy that is now predicted to be painfully slow in recovering.”

But when you see Condé’s projected numbers for its fall issues, which are traditionally bulging with ads, it’s even more startling. Particularly when you realize that the economy had already been slowing down a year ago (Disclosure: I do some free-lance work for Condé title Vanity Fair).

Take a look for yourself in the table below (click to enlarge): The numbers in the middle (faintly highlighted in blue) represent the year-over-year decline in ad pages, if you factor out the publisher’s special “Fashion Rocks” issues, which it gave up on last year. The more brutal numbers on the right are the “real” numbers. All of them are unpleasant.

Using the more favorable set of numbers, Teen Vogue is Condé’s relative star, down a mere 17 percent. And if Vogue was a publicly traded stock, it would have beaten expectations, since it came in above 400 pages–which is still down 29.7 percent (or more).

Not included the above chart: Totals for The New Yorker, Golf World, Modern Bride or Elegant Bride, since they aren’t monthlies and don’t have comparable September issues.

And here’s a trailer for “The September Issue,” a much-buzzed about documentary about Vogue’s effort to put out…well, you can figure it out.

The story went up on VF.com six days ago and has generated just under two million page views since then, says executive online editor Michael Hogan. (Disclosure: I’ve been a free-lance contributor to Vanity Fair’s “New Establishment” list in the past and will be again this year). Had Palin not made her blockbuster announcement on the Friday before the Fourth of July, the piece would be doing even better: Vanity Fair generated more traffic on the Tuesday the story was posted than the day after Palin made her news.

Still, it’s a big coup for the magazine’s site. The only way to generate more attention would be to run a slideshow featuring young attractive women.

Which the site can also do: Its story-and-photo package on Jessica Simpson, which ran in May, attracted 5.5 million page views to the site over a two-day period. Vanity Fair has generated 85 million page views so far this year, Hogan says.

And if you really want to generate traffic, run slideshows featuring very young attractive women. Last year the magazine’s 18-picture slideshow featuring a kind-of-topless Miley “Hannah Montana” Cyrus attracted some 18 million page views in a couple of days.

None of that will be terribly surprising to people who’ve wallowed in Web publishing for any amount of time. What surprised me a bit, though, was Vanity Fair’s decision to publish the piece in its entirety from the start. Doesn’t that cannibalize newsstand sales?

Maybe, says Hogan. But “it’s an open question as to what costs newsstand and what doesn’t.” And as the magazine tries to figure that out, he says, it has been experimenting. Some stuff goes up online before the magazine hits newsstands, while other pieces won’t appear on the site until a month later.

In the case of the Palin piece, the magazine had originally prepared to run an excerpt/summary of the story at first, then make the whole thing available by the end of the month after the news cycle was extinguished.

But on Friday, June 26, a few days before the excerpt was scheduled to run online, the magazine rethought its plan, assuming that the piece would be widely quoted and discussed before most people would ever see it. “The PR department started getting concerned that it was going to be controversial, and they wanted people to read the whole thing, and draw their own conclusions,” Hogan says. The final call went to Editor-in-Chief Graydon Carter, who, I gather, isn’t really much of a Web guy.

Meanwhile, I’m still waiting to read Michael Lewis’s latest piece for the magazine, on AIG’s (AIG) notorious “financial products” division. That one’s only available, for now, in excerpt form online, which means I’m actually going to have pay cash to read it, or wait a few hours–Hogan says it should be available in full later today.

Misguided managers, Luddite corporate raiders, a dramatic hostile takeover from a software giant, a revolving door of employees, a dash of Internet moolah and a tough-talking lady CEO to the rescue! And even some Googzilla action thrown in for good measure.

Of course, it has all the elements of a good story for Vanity Fair magazine!

Actually, Yahoo (YHOO) has all the elements of a good Mexican telenovela, but it’s only a magazine article that is apparently in the cards to chronicle the stumbles and bumbles of the Internet giant.

According to sources at both Microsoft (MSFT) and Yahoo, well-known Silicon Valley scribe and author Alan Deutschman has contacted the companies about a piece he is doing about the company–and, presumably, its tangles with various Web powers like Google (GOOG) and Microsoft–for the Condé Nast-owned Vanity Fair.

BoomTown’s efforts to contact Deutschman to find out the particulars were, alas, unreturned as yet.

But it goes without saying that our site’s huge archive on Yahoo’s hijinks–with much more to come soon, including memos I tag with secret codes too, much as sources tell me Yahoo does these days under new CEO Carol Bartz to prevent leaks–is free of charge to him for research.

Until then, here is my personal favorite Yahoo-related video about the awkward dinner former CEO and co-founder Jerry Yang finally had with me after a year of haranguing:

Time Warner’s Time Inc. (TWX) won’t be the only magazine publisher making cuts this fall: Condé Nast is trimming its sails, too.

The New York Observer reports that every title at the privately held publisher is being required to cut five percent from both its editorial and business ledgers, a number that MediaMemo hasn’t been able to confirm.

But I can tell you that the staff at Portfolio, Condé’s business magazine launched with equal parts fanfare and controversy last year, has been summoned to an all-hands meetings that should be starting … now. I’ll pass along more details as I get them.

UPDATE: A partial list of departing Portfolio staffers.

Recall that just two days ago Condé Nast publisher David Carey was expressing (guarded) optimism about advertising budgets next year. I’m guessing that if he were less optimistic, the cuts would be even larger.

And what about CondéNet, the Condé division that handles Web properties for some, but not all, of the publisher’s magazines? No comment, but one might imagine Sarah Chubb’s unit will be cutting back, too.

UPDATE: Condé is firing most of the staff of Portfolio.com, shrinking it from two dozen down to “single digits.”

UPDATE: I’m told that Portfolio staff has just been told the magazine will now be published 10 times a year, down from 12, and will cut five percent from its edit budget. (A second source says that will amount to 18 to 20 staffers) The December and January issues will be combined, as will the June and July issues.

UPDATE: One officially announced cut: Men’s Vogue will be shrunk down to a twice-yearly schedule. The one-paragraph release:

Men’s Vogue will be absorbed into Vogue and published in the spring and fall, it was announced today by Charles H. Townsend, President and C.E.O of Condé Nast Publications. It will continue to be edited by Jay Fielden.”

Disclosure: I’ve done freelance work for Vanity Fair.

Called “The Comeback Id” (oh, how pun-ny!), the article has gotten a lot of attention for pointing out the rampant speculation that Clinton’s well-known penchant for marital infidelity had returned.

And the reason for that disturbing development, besides Clinton himself? The piece actually placed a good bit of the blame on Clinton’s close friend, grocery magnate and billionaire Ron Burkle (pictured here), who also has been one of the key directors at Yahoo (YHOO) in its takeover fight with Microsoft (MSFT).

It’s a wonder Burkle can focus on the turmoil at Yahoo, given how busy he appears to be in the article corrupting Clinton both personally and–worse–professionally, via some questionable investments the pair had made through Burkle’s Yucaipa Companies.

Writer Todd Purdum paints a decidedly unattractive picture of Burkle, noting even the tasteless nickname of Burkle’s plane these days, in a portrayal so rough that Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang’s tough treatment by the press recently looks like a walk in the park.

Well, almost.

In what amounts to a rant by Carl Icahn (pictured here), The Wall Street Journal gives the billionaire investor lots of room to kvetch about what he thinks of Yang, including asserting that he will oust the Yahoo founder if he wins his proxy fight against the company.

“I am amazed at the lengths that Jerry Yang and the board went to entrench themselves in this situation,” said Icahn.

Apparently, Icahn was the only one who didn’t get the memo that Yahoo has been consistently obstreperous about Microsoft’s many overtures, since–well, let’s do the exact calculations–forever. And a day.

Still, Icahn perseveres and hangs this old entrenched management chestnut on a lawsuit that was recently filed by shareholders that points to the massive and costly severance plan Yahoo sneakily put into place as a ploy to fend off Microsoft.

“It’s no longer a mystery to me why Microsoft’s offer isn’t around,” Icahn said. “How can Yahoo keep saying they’re willing to negotiate and sell the company on the one hand, while at the same time they’re completely sabotaging the process without telling anyone.”

How? By Yang opening his mouth, that’s how, and then doing nothing much.

As a student of this lugubrious style of Olympic dithering, I would point Icahn to Yang’s 100-day Sacred Cow VisionQuest, well before this soap opera got started.

You need to catch up pronto, Carl!

And speaking of people irked by Yang of late, investor Gordon Crawford (pictured here) also made some news yesterday with his investment in Veoh Networks, part of a $30 million round that included Intel Capital and Adobe Systems (ADBE).

Existing investors in the not-YouTube video service–Shelter Capital, Spark Capital, Goldman Sachs (GS), Michael Eisner’s Tornante Company, Time Warner Investments (TWX) and Jonathan Dolgen–also ponied up more money.

Crawford, the SVP of Capital Research Global Investors, manages a massive portfolio, and it is one of Yahoo’s biggest shareholders.

And, unlike Veoh, Yahoo is an investment Crawford has not been happy with recently.

“I am extremely angry at Jerry Yang and at the so-called independent board,” he said in an interview a month ago. “I’m hoping that there is such an outpouring of outrage that the board is embarrassed into revisiting this thing, but I’m not optimistic about that.”

And by independent board, by the way, he meant directors like–you guessed it–Ron Burkle!

At least Burkle’s not to blame for the so-so, lots-and-lots-missing–Google? What Google? (GOOG)–piece in the same Vanity Fair issue, an oral history of the Internet.

Called “How the Web Was Won,” it makes the founding of the world’s most important medium seem awfully dull.

I’d recommend instead–as any sentient being would–the cover story on Angelina Jolie, with this sharp quote from her: “In my father’s generation, the product was 80% of what you were putting into the world, and your personal life was 20%. It now seems that 80% of the product I put out is silly, made-up stories and what I’m wearing.”

Or not wearing, in the case of the pictures of Jolie in this article.

BoomTown has known about it forever and Radar Online gave the lowdown about the creation of the hip-sounding news aggregator Web site–headed by high-profile editor Tina Brown (pictured here)–by Barry Diller’s IAC (IACI) in a report in early April.

Think the Huffington Post, but more culture and less political wonkishness in a bolder and more colorful design.

While still in its planning stages, though, it just hired a new GM to run the business: Caroline Marks.

She was GM of Comcast’s Ziddio, a social video endeavor, and was also head of content development for Comcast Interactive (CMCSA). Marks has also worked in several high-profile mobile companies in the U.K.

Marks will reports to IAC’s Nick Lehman–who works for Michael Jackson, the head of programming at IAC–to get the project off the ground for IAC and Brown, the former Talk, Vanity Fair and New Yorker editor.

The project has already hired Edward Felsenthal, the former deputy managing editor of The Wall Street Journal (and BoomTown friend), to helm the edit side under Brown.

IAC has dabbled a lot in online content initiatives of late with mixed results. Still, it is moving forward with even more.

For example, the company is set to debut a personal financial site in a joint venture with News Corp.’s (NWS) Dow Jones (owner of this site), called FiLife, in June.

It’s time for Vanity Fair’s annual ranking of 100 powerful business moguls, the 2007 New Establishment list, which always make me feel a little oily after reading it for reasons I cannot quite grasp.

Nonetheless, we press on, as it has become filled with earnest billionaire techies in recent years, rather than those scary media barons of yore.

Still, and no surprise, AllThingD.com‘s uber-boss Rupert Murdoch of News Corp. leads the list for his audacious $5 billion grab of Dow Jones.

But No. 2 and No. 3 are Silicon Valley stars Steve Jobs of Apple and those separated-at-birth Google twins (Larry Page and Sergey Brin). Reasons: Duh, iPhone for Jobs and the twins’ sheer do-no-evil evil plot to take over the known world and now, apparently, space.

But after these, it’s more of a parade of scarier investment types (except for folksy-but-probably-scary Warren Buffett at No. 5), flashy pols (Bill Clinton, Michael Bloomberg) and the usual coterie of Hollywood and media types (Steven Spielberg, of course, as well as Dick Parsons of Time Warner).

In any case, here’s the number rundown for digital types:

No. 10: Bill and Melinda Gates (for their philanthropy)

No. 15: Barry Diller and Diane von Furstenberg (him for Net stuff; her for renewed fashion empire)

No. 17: Howard Stringer (Sony struggles, but who doesn’t like Sir Howard?)

No. 23 Jeff Bezos (he managed to lose the Amazon.bomb moniker)

No. 56: Mike Moritz (new entry on the list for the clever VC)

No. 61: Jeff Skoll (but for media and not for Web stuff)

No. 62: Vinod Khosla (another new VC entry!)

No. 71: Paul Allen (just because!)

No. 83: Jonathan Ive (more iPhone mania)

No. 98: Arianna Huffington (Daaaarling, we’re thrilled)