Magma Enables Mobile Users to Publish Custom Digital Magazines
When longtime friends Jake Warner and Joey Chowaiki set out to change the digital publishing industry two years ago, all they had was a vision and a pitch deck. That vision: Magma, a platform that allows users to create their own digital magazines directly from their phones.
The idea was sparked when Warner was frustrated with the available mobile tools while working as a designer and media manager.
“I was always searching for new ways to share content without the quality being compromised and without being limited on how much could be shared,” Warner says. “Growing up an avid reader of magazines and running many successful blogs, I figured if I could somehow combine those formats and bring them to everyone in a modern way, it could be something powerful.”
Not long after designing the first prototype, Warner teamed up with Chowaiki, a lifelong friend who founded one of the first social media marketing firms in the space called Open Influence. They used their networks to brainstorm and gather data from some of the top creators, publishers and brands, allowing a product to formulate that could be useful and effective for anybody and everybody.
“We really wanted to enable anyone to feel comfortable using Magma,” Chowaiki says. “We looked at it as a place where first-time bloggers and 30-year publishing vets could all feel satisfied. The combination of understanding the mobile landscape from both a creator and marketer perspective, really allowed us to hone in on a product that could be both a tool and a destination.”
Magma is live in the iOS App Store two years later with a familiar and fresh interface and powerful tools for creation and consumption. In terms of the timeline for Magma’s features, revenue streams and full rollout Warner says that they “needed to start somewhere when it came to launching the first iteration of this product and that somewhere just so happened to be a very capable tool.”
“We are a data-driven company,” Warner adds. “And so we never make moves that aren’t dependent on the market’s requests. We like to listen and act rather than launch and hope. In the coming months we will be continuously releasing features and updates to expand the creation and sharing capabilities of Magma.”
Magma could be the the mobile device’s modern version of blogging platforms that ruled the early 2000s. The shareable nature of the “MAGS” and the simple creation process serves as an “assembly line” of content. Users can create their own MAG cover using Text, Photos and logos, kind of like a super-charged Instagram story. Then, they can select templates to combine photos, video, interactive maps, links, YouTube videos and as much written content as they prefer. No need to worry about lost data or time as Magma auto-saves everything as it’s made, so a crash, dead phone or sudden change in activity won’t result in lost progress. Once the “MAG” is finished, simply add a caption, select a genre, and publish.
The ability to rapidly create and publish of high-quality content in the form of a MAG has never been so simplified. While current MAGS can be shared absolutely anywhere, the founders are working on a feature that will enable MAGS to be consumed without the app at all.
