Time, Getty to Revive 'Life' Online
by Mike Shields - Mediaweek
The executives at Time Inc. clearly believe in eternal
Life.
The publishing giant said that the venerable
Life magazine would once again be reincarnated, this time as Life.com. Time Inc. has partnered with photo syndication service Getty images to jointly launch Life.com as a destination for thousands of new and classic photos in early 2009.
The new version of Life, perhaps best known for its iconic images of presidents, wars and Hollywood icons from the 1950s and '60s, follows the 2007 closure of the most recent Sunday supplement version of the magazine. Now, Time Inc. is looking to leverage the power of the Web to be both timely and deep, as Life.com wil publish 3,000 new images each day from across the globe, while also housing archives of thousands of magazine photos from the 1930s through the '90s.
Executives said that Life.com would leverage the growing prominence of image searches on engines like Google to drive traffic to the new site.
In addition, Life.com will feature several consumer-friendly offerings of the Web 2.0 variety, including the ability to share photos with friends and create special interest photo collections. Users will also be able to purchase photo albums of user-generated albums on the site.
