Have you noticed how painfully thin the few remaining weekly tech magazines are these days? Check out InfoWorld, Computerworld, Information Week and EWeek. These "books" were once robust heavyweights in terms of need and thickness. But since late 2000 these "books" appear to be treading water waiting for the ultimate final dive (based on an examination of thickness and ad pages).

So what happened and what is happening?

These four trade magazines are the survivors from among some 20 competitive books that were spawned from the mid-1980s during the rise of the personal computing and software boom. Remember Byte magazine? One could have gotten a bet of a million to one in 1992 on the wager of "will Byte ever go out of business." The same could be said for Datamation (now published by Jupitermedia as a Web site after being closed down by Cahners publishing several years ago). Remember Windows magazine etc.?

I come into the picture in the following way. Jupitermedia publishes technology information online in its Jupiterweb division. We have about 150 Web sites spread over four online networks (DevX, Earthweb, internet.com and Clickz). We compete for tech ad dollars with the above-mentioned magazines.

The latest issues of the four magazines mentioned in the first paragraph all have about 60 or less pages. Over the previous three years it is rare that any of these books is larger than 66 pages --- the norm is about 60 pages. The size has not risen nor has it declined very much over the past three years. The number of ad pages in each book is about the same in each issue too. Prior to 2000, these books were on average about 50% larger per issue.

Contrast this to rising ad space and ad dollars spent on online sites across the board (including those offered by Jupitermedia). Public filings from Cnet, my own company and many others indicate the beginnings of significant ad spending in the tech space on Web sites. If Cnet and Jupitermedia properties were magazines, instead of being 60-page books, they would today be 80-page magazines due to increased ad spending. In contrast as mentioned above, the lumbering print titles are limping along at the same number of pages that they were publishing several years ago.

Interestingly the above-mentioned magazines all have online properties. The companies that own these properties are private so we never get to see their financials. Perhaps the CEOs at these companies (Ziff Davis, IDG and CMP Media) are discussing the idea of killing off these dinosaurs and going Web-based? Perhaps they are not discussing the issue, but I can bet you that the employees are waiting for that very situation to develop.

What I am saying here is that in tech trade publishing, it will be the rare magazine that is in print by 2006. The future of tech trade publising is online.