Yahoo! Internet Life – A Magazine About the Internet

These days, every media outlet has an online presence.

Publications from local newspapers to broadcast behemoths have spent the last several decades trying out paywalls, pop-ups, social integrations and more to find the right balance between attracting readers and generating revenue online.

But the transition has been rocky at times, and legacy media outlets took some weird detours in their digital journeys.

Case in point: Yahoo! Internet Life magazine.

The print magazine sought to bring some of the newfound excitement of the internet to subscribers when it launched in 1995.

The magazine was published by Ziff Davis, which actually licensed the Yahoo! name to give the magazine more cred. At the time, Yahoo! was the most prominent broadband brand out there and the reigning gateway to the worldwide web.

What is Today’s Yahoo! Internet Life?

With headlines like “How to play .MP3 music” and “Email You Can Use Anywhere”, the magazine feels laughably dated today. And the existence of an all-print magazine celebrating the internet feels more than a little ironic.

It also begs the question: What will be the Yahoo! Internet Life of today?

The internet has only accelerated the pace of new platforms, formats and ways of connecting with audiences. Not every communications effort will age gracefully (we don’t want to talk about past versions of the Braithwaite website).

Despite the outdated headlines, many of Yahoo! Internet Life’s topics were quite forward-looking for its time. For plenty of brands in 1995, pitching Yahoo! Internet Life was probably a smart move.