My staff tracks what's going on the digital lives of our member companies very carefully.In fact，as I noted at AMC，we've created an online database of magazine digital brand extensions that we update daily.It's posted on our website-www.magazine.org.
In the first nine months of this year，we found that our member companies announced the launch of 85 digital initiatives.These included the following：online radio stations，branded e-mail accounts，podcast series and interactive dating blogs.We also discovered that more than three dozen magazines have profiles on MySpace.
Already，MPA has staged two digital conferences in the last 11 months and I know that some of you in this room were in attendance.Our next digital conference will be held February 27 in New York City.A special part of it will be MPA's first-ever digital awards ceremonies for magazines.We'll unveil the winning magazines websites in 10 categories.These include Best Online Video，Best Mobile Strategy and Best Online Community.I hope to see some of you there.
As I told conference attendees last week，most of what we're seeing magazines accomplish in the digital space is evolutionary.Some of it is revolutionary.But none of it suggests that we abandon the past.To paraphrase Frank Moss，the head of the MIT Media Lab who was the keynote speaker at our April Digital Conference：“Magazines as an object will never go away.Their form is simple and elegant.Magazines are a human-centered design.”
I believe that print magazines are the centerpiece of the brand experience.They endure because they offer readers and advertisers unique attributes unmatched by other media.Magazines are both timely and timeless.Before Google，before 24 hour news，before television，before radio，before the telegraph，there were magazines.
But today，we know that magazines are more than ink and paper.Their power and pull，their magical gift for drawing communities of people together，their ability to connect advertisers to those communities，extend way beyond the hard copies that are folded into our briefcases，sit on our bedside tables or elegantly decorate our living rooms.