Vanity Fair is riding high on its Trump feud
Donald Trump declared Vanity Fair's subscriptions were "Way down," and so, they went way up.
The Condé Nast magazine reported its subscriptions increased 100-fold Thursday compared to the average number sold. That bump was the "highest number of subscriptions sold in a single day ever" for the publisher, a spokesperson told Folio.
It all apparently stemmed from a tweet Thursday morning directed at the magazine and its editor Graydon Carter, a longtime Trump nemesis.
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First, let me note the falsity in Trump's tweet. Vanity Fair's numbers are not "way down." According to Folio, Vanity Fair experienced a 2 percent increase in revenue from the year prior. Digital revenues, which make up 18 percent of the overall revenue, are up 74 percent.
The reason Trump decided to spend his morning sharing thoughts on the state of the media industry, and specifically Vanity Fair, is unclear. But it likely has something to do with Vanity Fair's scathing review of one of the president-elect's restaurants titled "Trump Grill Could Be The Worst Restaurant In America." Ouch.
Vanity Fair also covered Trump's meeting with tech leaders this week and described the president-elect as a "dim orange Sun King."
The restaurant review has received almost 1 million unique views since Trump's tweet. Other articles on Trump within Vanity Fair's The Hive drew more than 330,000 unique visitors, and the magazine's official Twitter account gained almost 10,000 new followers.
Following Trump's tweet, Vanity Fair used it as an opportunity to pitch for subscribers. The company sent this tweet Thursday:
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And changed the banner of their website's front page to read "THE 'WAY DOWN, BIG TROUBLE, DEAD!' MAGAZINE TRUMP DOESN'T WANT YOU TO READ." Now the website has a banner that reads: "THE MAGAZINE TRUMP DOESN'T WANT YOU TO READ. SUBSCRIBE NOW!"
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Topics Donald Trump
Kerry Flynn is a business reporter for Mashable covering the tech industry. She previously reported on social media companies, mobile apps and startups for International Business Times. She has also written for The Huffington Post, Forbes and Money magazine. Kerry studied environmental science and economics at Harvard College, where she led The Harvard Crimson's metro news and design teams and played mellophone in the Band. When not listening to startup pitches, she runs half-marathons, plays with puppies and pretends to like craft beer.
