Business 2.0 Stuck in a Publishing 1.0 World

As I have mentioned, I still read dead tree versions of magazines.  But when I find an article I like in the print edition, I usually turn to the online version to forward links to colleagues or include in posts on this blog.  It’s simply more convenient and reader-friendly.

Unfortunately, Business 2.0 remains stuck in a Publishing 1.0 world.  OK, perhaps it is more like version 1.1, but still it falls far short of what one would expect in today’s media environment.  It turns out that they don’t publish all of their content online.  Now, if they had it all there and charged for access to some, I could understand that.  After all, I’m not one of those “all content must be free” types.  I support subscription models.

But Business 2.0 publishes stuff in the magazine that doesn’t make it onto the web in any form.  That’s very unusual for a high-profile publication these days, especially one that bills itself as “the playbook for a new generation of leaders.”

So when I went to find a link for “A Startup’s Best Friend? Failure” from the March 2007 issue to talk about it on this blog, I couldn’t do it.  It simply wasn’t there.  I looked high and low. Used the search feature.  Got nothing.

I may yet write about the power of failure.  But it will be harder to tell the story without allowing my readers to click on a simple link to read about the experiences described in the article.  They can’t read the original source to hear about the errors made by Dogster or Riya and how those companies learned from them and grew because of it. 

Regrettably, my readers lose out on the full quality of the experience as it should have been, and Business 2.0 loses out on some readers.

UPDATE: Business 2.0 posted the failure article this morning (2/28) on its web site.  Better late than never, I suppose.