Forbes acting like a 96-year-old startup

Mark Glaser of PBS MediaShift writes about Forbes magazine and how it is trying to change its publishing model.

Glaser writes, “Nowadays, Forbes Media remains a private company, but has reinvented itself with: an online platform at Forbes.com with 1,300+ contributors; a native ad platform with BrandVoice; brand extensions including conferences and international editions; and a technology company that is looking to license its publishing platform obtained by purchasing True/Slant (and installing Lewis Dvorkin as chief product officer).

“That’s a lot to consider. To really rethink and reinvent itself, Forbes brought in Mike Perlis as CEO in December 2010, notably the first non-Forbes family member to run the mother ship. Perlis cut his teeth in traditional magazine publishing at IDG, Rodale, Playboy and Ziff-Davis, before becoming a venture capital partner at Softbank from 2000 to 2010, helping fund BeliefNet, Associated Content, Huffington Post and BuzzFeed. The true traditional player turned digital rainmaker. And during his time at Forbes, he has not shied away from pushing the envelope, taking the contributor network purchased from True/Slant and adding branded content — called ‘BrandVoice’ — before ‘native ad’ were in vogue.

“He was in a tough spot when he joined the company, which had gone through rounds of layoffs while its peers BusinessWeek and Fortune suffered a similar downturn during the economic decline. When I talked to Perlis recently, his only regret in the chaotic period when he came to Forbes was that they didn’t move faster into mobile. Perlis now looks beyond those print competitors to web-native publications (some of which he funded at Softbank) who are innovating with native ads and responsive sites.

“‘Winning used to be a narrow paradigm for us built around print competitors,’ he told me during a Skype video interview. ‘It’s very different for us today … It’s not about beating anyone, it’s about building our business uniquely around the assets that we’ve got.’

“Part of that includes expanding internationally in many countries with 30 local language editions. And part of that means Forbes is now a technology company as well, and Perlis said they have two beta testers who will license the publishing platform in the near future.”