There’s a lot of Magazine hype in the blogosphere recently, and I’ve contributed plenty of my own Magazine hype in the past. So I thought it would be a good opportunity to offer some anti-hype, derived from my own experience reading Magazines — an explanation of why I STOPPED reading Magazines.

For a period of my life, I was a Magazine addict — addict really is the right word. I found Magazines to be mesmerizing, which partly reflects the brilliance of their design and partly that I was reading really interesting, insightful, enjoyable content.

But here’s the problem, and why I quit (with the requisite 12-step program, yadda, yadda):

Magazines are a massive waste of time.

Let me immediately qualify that — it’s not that ALL Magazines are a waste of time. It’s that TOO MUCH reading of Magazines is a massive waste of time. Some aspects are hugely valuable and well worth the time. There’s really interesting “conversation.” There’s connectedness. There’s discovery.

But the noise to signal ratio is WAY too high. And the temptation to read Magazines for the sake of reading is WAY too high.

But the big problem was that I was paying attention to Magazines too often when there was something much higher yield I should have been paying attention too — especially work I needed to get done.

But Magazines have turned distraction into an art form. It’s like hanging out at a bar with a bunch of interesting people (some of whom are talking on their cellphones) and forgetting that you have to go home. Which, when done in moderation, is a very GOOD thing. But it was too hard to moderate Magazine reading.

And so I decided that I needed to shut it off.

I’m not sure that this is a failing on the part of Magazines — perhaps its cup runneth over. But it does make me wonder whether it will ever last on beyond geeks who thrive on spending massive quantities of their lives consuming print. (And, yes, hi, my name is Adam and I’m a print geek — I speak from experience.)

Magazines shares much in common with Books — print on steroids, available round the clock, instantly on, with no technology limits. Which, again, are not inherently bad, and can actually be very good.

I guess it’s a matter of personal choice (e.g. I don’t watch much TV), and what type of user an application wants to serve. For people like students, who are already predisposed to sink a lot of time into the print, applications like Magazines and Books make a lot of sense.

That said, Magazines and Books are pioneers — proving grounds for technology that will evolve into highly useful applications (e.g. Gutenberg didn't produce the first bible).

I’ll add as an interesting footnote that although I haven’t read a Magazine for months, I continue to get new subscription offers every day — which is evidence that Magazine publishers are expanding somewhat randomly and arbitrarily, rather than based on clear value (i.e. decisions about who to send subscription offers to are typically impulse).

Thanks to Rex Hammock for the Madlibs-like template.