Macteens
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 Screenshot of macteens.com |
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| URL | http://macteens.com/ |
|---|---|
| Commercial? | Yes |
| Type of site | Online Magazine |
| Registration | Optional |
| Owner | MT Network |
| Created by | Chris Saribay Andrew Wilkinson Colin Winslow Clark Mueller |
Macteens is an Apple Macintosh community website and online magazine targeted towards teenage users, featuring news, reviews, and forums, established in 1998. Following a period of dormancy, the website was revived in December 2001, by Chris Saribay and Andrew Wilkinson.
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[edit] History
Macteens (branded as "MacTeens") was originally formed as collaborative weblog formed in late 1998 by Neil Sroka and Jonathan Claydon. The website continually featured daily entries that noted news and the opinions of contributors. This early version of the website did not have any interactive portions, but had partnered with a website named MacParty to jointly host community discussion forums. This original incarnation of Macteens was also the first to discover the existence of Apple's Power Mac G4 Cube in 2000, before its official unveiling due to an accidental posting of specifications on ATi's website. Later, in that same year, the website was shutdown, citing a floundering interest [1] in the concept.
The website was closed until late 2001, when Chris Saribay and Andrew Wilkinson began working to restore the website to its past glory. In 2002, with the assistance of Clark Mueller and Colin Winslow, the rebranded "Macteens" was launched, complete with new content from Macworld Conference and Expo. The website continued to grow and evolve, eventually incorporating discussion forums and image galleries. Unique magazine-style content was added, including tutorials, reviews and investigative reports. Such reports would occasionally be referenced by those in the traditional media, including an article in the Baltimore Sun that included excerpts of a Macteens report; noting several government related features [2] in Mac OS X. Macteens contributors have also been interviewed by television news crews, including G4 TechTV, CBC and MSNBC.
Today, Macteens continues to publish magazine-style content on its website, focusing on special event coverage of Mac events, such as Macworld Conference and Expo and Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference, in addition to daily news, new product reviews and industry analysis. The online content magazine is the primary focus of Macteens, with community portions being made available through navigational tabs at the top of each page. The website currently includes forums and image galleries and the online magazine. Macteens runs an email service dubbed "MTMail", in coordination with Gmail Hosted. The website also mentions another community feature named MTBlog, currently in development.
[edit] Extended projects, "teens" franchise
Macteens has a history of launching companion websites to further its reach into its target market. Some of these websites have a specific message (as in the case of DontBuyMusic, see below), while others extend the website's reach into other operating systems, such as Linux and Microsoft Windows.
[edit] DontBuyMusic.com
In April 2003, Apple Computer had announced its new online-based music store, the iTunes Music Store, selling songs for 99ยข. Shortly after the launch of this product, in August, a competing vendor (BuyMusic.com) began offering a similar product, selling music online. However, instead of using the companies' own marketing resources and assets, they closely mimicked and replicated Apple's marketing. Notably, this included both companies' television advertisements; both featured people singing their favorite songs, aided by an MP3 player. Aside from a different title card noting the respective websites of each vendor at the end of each advertisement, the advertisements were identical.
Macteens quickly took note of this, and began creating a parody of the website, named DontBuyMusic.com. Days later, lawyers representing Direct Response Network, parent company of BuyMusic.com, sent a legal order to Macteens' hosting providers, ordering that the site be deconstructed and removed,[3] ironically citing that the use of copyrighted materials was prohibited. Despite being protected by fair use laws, Macteens decided to shutdown DontBuyMusic for a short period of time, while they worked to create a very similar website using their own code-base and graphics. As time progressed, BuyMusic.com began changing its marketing (and was eventually assimilated into Buy.com), and the website declined in poularity. As of this writing, DontBuyMusic.com forwards to the Macteens website.
[edit] Linuxteens
April 2004 brought the second member of the "teen franchise" for Macteens, with the creation of Linuxteens. Linuxteens was established with the same goals set in mind for Macteens: providing a community for teenagers, this time being users of the Linux operating system. Aside from covering news and including interactive portions such as discussion forums, the site also aims to develop and distribute its own version of Linux (development currently shelved).
[edit] WinTeens
Macteens latest venture into the teen technology space was the launch of WinTeens in March 2006, to cover Microsoft's Windows operating system. The website is currently undergoing extensive development.
[edit] References
- ^ "Buh - Bye.", MacTeens/Internet Archive, July 26, 2000.
- ^ "So Close and Yet So Far.", As the Apple Turns, noting Baltimore Sun article, September 18, 2003.
- ^ "Music Parody Site Pulls the Plug", Wired, August 20, 2003.
