LAS VEGAS — Playboy Enterprises, Inc. (NYSE: PLA, PLAA) and Bondi Digital Publishing LLC, yesterday went live with the public beta version of www.playboyarchive.com, a website where web viewers can instantly view a collection of digital back issues of Playboy Magazine from each of the years 1954 through 2007 without charge.
In a first for Playboy, readers and fans will be able to go online and instantly browse, search and read a compilation of perfect digital back issues of the magazine, many of which are highly sought-after collectors’ items. Each digital issue in the web archive will appear exactly as it did – including advertisements – in the original print edition of Playboy.
“Playboy has an incredibly rich history and an intensely loyal readership,” says Hugh M. Hefner, Playboy Founder, Editor-in-Chief and Chief Creative Officer. “This is the perfect opportunity to offer them something they have always wanted and also a great way to allow a whole new generation to easily explore the magazine.”
The system loads magazines quickly and users are finding it very easy to navigate. “We are impressed with the way Bondi’s digital publishing web platform presents the digital editions – it’s fast and easy to use. And the resolution Bondi was able to get makes the reading experience enjoyable,” said Leopold Froehlich, Executive Editor.
To bring Playboy to life digitally, Bondi Digital Publishing – the software pioneers that developed the platform for The Complete New Yorker – scanned and re-typed each issue of Playboy. David Anthony, Co-Founder of Bondi noted: “Playboy has been an exceptionally influential part of America’s cultural landscape for more than 50 years. We are thrilled to give people a whole new way to explore that history.” That sentiment was echoed by Murat Aktar, co-founder of Bondi Digital Publishing who agreed and added: “It has been a five-year effort to get our system onto the Internet, so it is exciting to be getting such positive response from users on the new web platform.”
The web component of Bondi’s online digital publishing platform was created with the help of super-development house and Microsoft Partner of the Year award winner, Vertigo. The platform offers an end-to-end system for publishing and monetizing back archives of magazines on the web. It was launched and showcased during Microsoft’s Mix developers conference in Las Vegas yesterday, and makes extensive use of Microsoft’s rich media technology: Silverlight.