ElleGirl sees new media as the next best thing for the magazine. Effective with the last printed issue, the June/July edition, ElleGirl will close print and beef-up online. ElleGirl.com will be redesigned and extended with a partnership with Alloy—the online teen marketing firm which also just bought the high school networking site, Sconex for $8.7 million March 29, 2006.

Ironically, even though ElleGirl was growing and circulation was up, Hachette, like many other print properties, has changed courses and plans to refocus energy on the internet. This also includes its spin-off, Elle Accessories (which sounds like Alloy’s Delia.com).

Alloy, like Murdoch’s News Corp., which bought MySpace (see also “MySpace Gets Bought by Murdoch for $580 Million,” and “Breaking Music Videos on MySpace”), is trying fill in it’s gaps within the social networking sphere of youth culture. Alloy now has alloy.com, delias.com, the action sports site ccs.com, collegeclub.com, and careersandcolleges.com (see also Label Networks’ North American Youth Culture Studies for top website rankings, trends, and why they’re favorites). Only thing left in the social networking sphere is for Facebook to get snatched up, but with an asking price of $2 billion, it’s a big chunk to swallow.