The Guardian Newspaper’s iPad photo app has become the sixth most popular free iPad app in the US, according to new media age, as a result of more than 50,000 downloads in the 10 days since its launch. The quick success of the photo app highlights the popularity of Guardian content—photos as well as written journalism and video—around the world, not just in the paper’s home market of the UK.
The rapid take-up may also point to trends in usage of the recently released iPad. Several reviews, including one from Claudine Beaumont of the Telegraph, have praised its presentation of images. Beaumont commented that “physically flicking through photos … and movies is just more enjoyable on the iPad than a laptop.” At the same time, she found the iPad less suitable for reading than older devices, despite the ease of use: “… the backlighting of Apple’s pin-sharp display is going to cause a lot of tired eyes.” If other users agree, the iPad may have a bigger future as a viewing screen for photo, movie, gaming and mixed-media content than for reading per se.
For more information on the way consumers in the UK currently access digital information, including news, read the eMarketer report, “UK Digital News and Information Convergence.”
The BBC has revealed that its iPlayer catch-up service received 3.5 million requests for content in February 2010, and notched up more than 1.4 million unique visitors per day. The average time spent watching TV content was 64 minutes.
The iPhone and the Nintendo Wii continue to grow in importance as viewing devices. Each accounted for 5% of TV content requests registered by the iPlayer in February.
These figures offer further proof that UK consumers are engaging with TV and radio content via an ever-increasing range of distribution platforms.
Wired Magazine just released a video promoting their upcoming app for the iPad, and it looks gorgeous. We’ve all heard about how large-format e-readers such as the iPad and Amazon Kindle DX can deliver a truly immersive experience, but this video gets that point across visually. I was especially struck by interactive features embedded in the ads – something we haven’t heard much about because we’ve been understandably focused on editorial content. Delivering this type of rich media advertising experience will be crucial for publishers threatened by a sluggish economy, competition from other forms of entertainment, changes in consumer behavior, and the inexorable march of technology. (Read more…)
Up until this week, The New York Times has been vague about its plans to erect an online pay wall starting in early 2010. Maybe they should have kept it that way.
All we knew was that The Times would follow the Financial Times model—i.e., a metered-access system where site visitors can to read a fixed number of articles for free before they hit the pay wall.
Now, The Times is starting to share more details of its plans, but instead of striking a clear, consistent chord, we’re hearing a cacophony of mixed messages.
Speaking at the PaidContent 2010 conference at the Times’ headquarters in New York, chairman and publisher Arthur Sulzberger, president and CEO Janet Robinson and senior VP of digital operations Martin Nisenholtz entertained questions from journalists. Reuters’ Felix Salmon asked whether Times branded blogs such as Freakonomics and Paul Krugman’s blog would be counted toward the quota, to which Mr. Nisenholtz responded that Times’ blogs would be behind the pay wall.
As Mr. Salmon pointed out in a blog posting of his own, this decision by The Times raises uncomfortable possibilities, including:
Readers who participate in the Freakonomics comments section will be prompted to subscribe to the full New York Times online package in order to post.
The Times will be allowing free access to site visitors who follow links from external blogs to NYTimes.com stories (as the company said it would do), while potentially not allowing the same access to visitors who arrive at a Times story via a Times blog.
When panel moderator Staci Kramer of PaidContent.org’s ContentNext Media pressed the panelists on the latter point, Mr. Nisenholtz alluded to a Google system that would cap the number of “first-link-free” stories that site visitors could read on NYTimes.com. Mr. Sulzberger added that The Times wasn’t interested in building “a system that just tries to please 5%-7% of the audience,” referring to “side-door” entrants who arrive at NYTimes.com from third-party sites.
This strategy seems destined to drive away readers. The blogosphere is the epitome of free media, and possibly the last thing that The Times should put behind its pay wall. Other sources of content—in-depth news analyses, crossword puzzles, archives, even video—seem like things that people would be willing to pay for. But blogs?
In the year they have to figure this out, let’s hope The Times leaders see the light. Otherwise, they might end up with TimesSelect déjà vu all over again.
Today, Apple will unveil the latest in a line of evolutionary moves to reinvent an existing product category. As detailed by Silicon Alley Insider, Apple has a steep hill to climb if it hopes to overcome a long history of failed attempts in tablet computing. Then again, with the iPod and iPhone, Apple has proven that it excels at polishing up a readily available product with superior design and a pleasing, intuitive user interface and then promoting it with the company’s trademark marketing prowess.
