Part 2: Content is alive, offline promotion and future plans

Magicalia is regarded as a site that will make it in the "content" arena. How was it designed to be different from its "content competitors?"
We build communities, and those passionate communities fuel themselves in terms of the content they generate. We write news and editorial, but much of the content, ranging from forum opinion, product reviews, directory listings and editorial articles, are written by our users, who simply want to share their thoughts and opinions with like-minded people.

It is all enabled by easy-to-use technology. This keeps the cost of content provision low, so we can build our audience at a cost relatively lower than other companies.

So content isn't dead! How do you feel about the push to charge for content?
Content is not dead, but I think the idea that you can throw loads of money at building content in the hope that it will build an audience is too ambitious. We do not charge users on our sites for the content that we publish on our sites, but there is a model, which we use, that charges other people to publish our content on their sites.

Can you talk about your offline promotion and why you've chosen that avenue as well?
Offline promotion is key to building a brand. It may be less applicable when trying simply to draw traffic to a site, which is the stage when you just want people to visit the site to show off what you have to them, but in terms of supporting and emphasizing a brand that is already well known offline promotion is key. It also gives you profile in the industry you're working in, and for a portfolio of sites like us we need to build that profile in multiple industries.

Is it daunting to provide a website for mobile Internet users when there are so many conflicting hardware issues out there still to be solved? And why is it worthwhile doing so?
It's not daunting for us because it's automatically generated from our main website. It enables the user to take the content related to his interested and location, so his PDA isn't overloaded. It's worth it to show you are leading the way in technology development for content publishing on the Web.

Magicalia plans to develop around twenty sites to create a broad-based leisure and Internet publishing business. Can you tell us your specific plans with respect to publishing? Are there additional ways you're going to use your "content" to generate revenue offline?
We are in early days on that topic, though we are striking an increasing number of deals with offline magazines. We intend to have a network of 15-20 sites, and they will support and be supported by offline publications. The best way to gather an audience and retain them, and generate revenue from them, is by harnessing the power of the Internet and aligning it with established publications offline.

Finally, what's the magic behind Magicalia's continued success and its ability, even now, to garner venture funding?
We have a true belief in the value of what we're doing, and have been able to communicate that belief to a number of venture funders. Content is not dead, advertising is not dead, and we have shown that we're providing content and providing uniquely targeted marketing opportunities in markets that aren't currently served by this sort of service.