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JAM magazine launches online community
The youth magazine has launched an online community called Club Jam for which it is exploring content partnerships
JAM, the Indian youth magazine that has been around since 1995, has launched a community website called Club Jam (http://clubjam.jammag.com/). Like the magazine, the site will be a platform for original content contributed by college students from across the country.
Apart from written material, members can contribute photographs and videos and form groups on the site. Arjun Ravi, online editor at JAM, says, “We didn’t want to make Club Jam a social network. It’s a place for college students and budding writers to have their work published.” He adds that “since all the contributions received in the magazine cannot be accommodated in print, the web is a good platform for the content”.
Ravi says that though the community is a place for people who like the magazine content, Club Jam will also attract a non-magazine audience which is online.
The site is also adding more local content. It is currently running a contest to seek editors in Mumbai, Delhi and Pune. Ravi says that apart from city specific content, the site will also have college specific content.
The community is aimed at the same target audience as the magazine: 16-24 year olds, mainly college students. However, Ravi says the site is also attracting other audiences such as working people. “Online readers are more proactive in their contributions. We are receiving 5,000-6,000 page views a day since our launch a month ago,” he says.
The Club Jam site is distinct from JAM’s official site, www.jammag.com (launched in 1997), which has also been revamped recently. JAM plans to migrate its 85,000 members on the JAM site to the Club Jam site, which has about 1,000 members. “We expect to have about 500,000 users by the end of the year at the rate at which we are growing,” says Ravi.
Club Jam is exploring content partnerships with brands. “We believe that the best way to integrate brands on a social site is to make it content driven,” he explains. JAM has separately created a site for Elle18, which has links on both sites of the magazine. Apart from branded content, Club Jam will also allow display ads.