Seventeen is the latest traditional player to partner with social networking powerhouse MySpace to build buzz and hopefully stimulate some new subscriptions. Although the magazine remains the largest of the teen-focused players, it has lost its share of teen and young adult female readers in the past three years to competitors like CosmoGIRL and more recently, Teen Vogue. What's more, Seventeen also had a decent Internet presence a couple of years ago, although they have not kept with technological and social trends of the Internet, and for the most part, the site looks pretty much the same as it did two years ago. As social networking sites like MySpace, Facebook and Tagged and others, have become the go to "hangouts" among teen and young adult females, online sites for magazines like Seventeen (and even CosmoGIRL and the recently folded ELLEgirl) have been steadily declining which doesn't bode well. So, what are you to do if you are Seventeen? The initial thought was to partner with the number one cable network among teen and college females, MTV, for a reality series called "Miss Seventeen." From what I saw (and heard from many others as well) it might have been the worst reality program to ever hit the air waves to date. I doubt we will see it again. Ok, plan two, go where the eyeballs are, hit up MySpace. You would think this would be a no-brainer, right? Not exactly. The Seventeen page on MySpace is (in my opinion) poorly designed, it doesn't even fit proportionally in a browser window. I could go on, but you can check it out for yourself. My suggestion for Seventeen's Web team is to take a cue from HBO and see what they did for Entourage on MySpace.
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