Vulture.com goes national

New York magazine's journey from perceived regional magazine to multiplatform national brand continues apace. As many other publishers throw their hats into the increasingly crowded hyperlocal ring, New York is proceeding in the other direction by taking its Vulture blog national. Typing Vulture.com into the URL right now will get you redirected to New York magazine's daily entertainment site. Starting this evening, however, Vulture.com becomes a standalone website.

"While it still has a relationship with New York and New York magazine, it is its own thing," New York magazine Editor Adam Moss told the Media Decoder blog. "... the New York sensibility is a plus for some and a minus for others."

Fair enough. Vulture's de-emphasizing the regionality of its New York parent site is the logical play when going after luxury advertisers. NYmag.com draws 4.1 million U.S. viewers per month, according to Quantcast. Most of those viewers make over $60,000 a year and do not come from New York. Already the site has ads from Gucci, Louis Vuitton and American Express. New York’s publisher, Lawrence C. Burstein, told the Decoder blog that he hoped to attract advertisers who pitch beauty products as well as premium entertainment-industry clients like movie studios, Showtime, Bravo and HBO.

In other words, Vulture is going after the same advertisers as sites like Gawker, which also has an influential readership. Although New York magazine has always been a national consumer magazine with a New York point of view, the cosmetic distancing of the Vulture blog curiously parallels Gawker's evolution from a Manhattan-centric blog into a national gossip site.

At present, the Mad Men Recap: Sex, Soup, and Sandwiches is the most commented upon post in the last 72 hours on Vulture. Recaps, location maps, and -- perhaps most important -- rankings (example: ranking the Glee guest stars) will be regular features of the blog. Vulture also plans to play the role of cultural currency arbiter by ranking upcoming pop cultural milestones -- codenamed: "Anticipation Index."

Incidentally, Bravo TV announced in April that they would be developing a television show based on the Approval Matrix, a popular New York magazine feature. Vulture has a regularly updated Twitter account with 10,851 followers -- a surprisingly low number considering the site's online popularity.

New York Media also owns New York Magazine, nymag.com, MenuPages.com, grubstreet.com and TheCut.com. Menupages -- now an app -- finds restaurants and menus in neighborhoods like Brooklyn, Manhattan, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Boston, Chicago, the DC metro area, and South Florida. New York Media also owns Grubstreet, a local restaurant blog that covers food related news in Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, Philadelphia, San Fransisco.