Rio, Fiddy and Duffy

Rio Ferdinand's foray into publishing has gone live. It's called #5 Magazine, because that's his number. That's fucking genius.

The digital publication can be found at the egotastic URL of http://www.rioferdinand.com/.

Eh, I own my real name as a domain name, so I really shouldn't poke fun. However, know what I did? I refused his cookie. Take that.

Anyway, in the first issue, you can read about 50 Cent, Duffy, Mickey Rourke, and Cristiano Ronaldo—oh, we almost care about two of those—and win some tacky King Baby jewelry.

The layout of the online mag is pretty clean. So points for that. And the thing is Flash'ed to the hilt with some well designed interactivity. In terms of content, Harper's this ain't (but LB had nice things to say about the Maradona piece).

Still, they took the 5 theme and ran with it. And kept running long after someone should have suggested stopping. Under music, there are blurbs about five bands; and film, blurbs about five films. Five pics for style, Five quotes from Duffy (she has five thoughts worth reading?), five gadgets, five favorite felching encounters of Ronaldo. So all the content is designed to fit around that meme. It's kind of stupid.

So, recap: Better than average eye candy. Some content you might care about other stuff you might not. Worth a look for the top notch UI, but with every click you support a United player and thus strangle a kitten.

Sunderland fans, please continue waiting for #26 Magazine.