With brands spending so much money trying to build communities I find it amusing that one so popular should announce that it is to die. JPG Magazine announced recently (Jan1) it would be shutting up shop by Jan 5th. Wow 4 days to clear your desk and take down your personal photos. Harsh.
What brand will come in and save the day for little old JPG Magazine?
Kodak, Canon, Nikon, Yahoo!/Flickr, Sony hell even Microsoft with their Expression suite could jump in and save the day and buy themselves a ready made community and have them kissing their ass for doing so. Kodak already sponsor the site in some way so why not take the reigns and own that sucka?
Why not start 2009 with a pre-made community and use that to help snowball what ever you had planned to do later int he year. You might even be able to buy it, put a proper revenue model in place (easier said than done) and flip it.
The community response has been huge check out the Save JPG!!! page which is asking if people want to pay a membership fee.
JPG Mag seem open to ideas so fingers crossed someone with some cash and some vision can step in. It's a bad time of year to try and round up some quick cash though.
All I can say is if you buy it slap the people at 8020 Media as they are obviously have no business sense or respect to their community for wanting to pull the rug from the site so fast. Also it seems Minor Ventures (the backer of 8020 Media) doesn't have the moxy to make a sale or maybe wanted too much?
Note: If you're in trouble then ask for help earlier. Oh and losers cant be choosers. Why let the community die. Take any offer you can get hand over the keys and be thankful.
Update: Techcrunch have posted that a number of buyers are in talks. Smugmug is one but this site charges it's users so JpgMag users can expect to get hit with a fee if this goes ahead.
