I found an interesting tidbit of information today on the Magazine Publishers of America (MPA) website, which provides circulation trend data and marketing information for magazine publishers and advertisers.

MPA provides a list of 36 magazines that have active profiles on MySpace. Basically, these profiles give magazines an outlet for reaching out to tech-minded teens and young people on a personal level.

The MySpace pages of these magazines usually consist of a blog, a profile picture that depicts the most recent magazine cover, video content, featured music, and LOTS of comments. For example, on the Cosmopolitan and Maxim pages, there are over 20,000 and 46,000 friends listed, respectively. These magazines and others have created huge online communities not on their official websites, but on their MySpace pages.

Some of the most developed of the MySpace magazine pages are the pages for Teen Magazines, like CosmoGirl and Seventeen. These sites have links to interactive content on their regular homepages, and feature quizzes and games to engage their teen MySpace audiences.

In a report by Kat Haddon, “A Changing Business Model for a Virtual Phenomenon“, which is featured on the MPA website, the author gives a detailed explanation of the history of MySpace as well as suggestions for ways in which MySpace and other social networking sites can turn their huge audiences into profitable business models. Kat finishes her report with the following quote:

We trust the media we know, and we explore the media we don’t know. But with all our focus on new media, we seem to be forgetting the most important medium: people. Real-life community is an integral part of MySpace’s new proposed business model, because it has the potential to open doors for the future of marketing by bringing us back to real-life relationships.

It seems like magazines understand that the structure of news and media is changing, and some are trying to take advantage of this shift by offering online supplements to their printed content. While newspaper websites tend to be redundant when compared to their printed versions and other news sites, magazines sites supplement their print editions with original content on the Internet. What I’ve noticed from conducting my current research about magazine sites is that while the homepages of magazines don’t offer a lot of geeky Web 2.0 features, they have created a significant amount of content that is easily digestible and fits the format of reading on the Web. I think the presence of magazine MySpace pages is a great example of how old media can reach out to new media audiences without expending a lot of cash or effort.

Here is a list of the magazine MySpace pages features on the MPA website:

ATV Rider
Blender
Bust Magazine
Catalyst
Complex
CosmoGirl!
Cosmopolitan
D Magazine
Drum Magazine
FHM
Filmmaker
Free skier
Guitar Player Magazine
Jane
Maxim
Metal Edge
Metal Maniacs
Mini truckin’
New York Magazine
Nylon
Paste
Seventeen
Shojo beat
Skateboarder
Skiing
Snowboarder
Star
Street Trucks
Stuff
Surfer
Tango
Tokion
Transworld snow
Transworld surf
URB
Vibe
YL