There is optimism but a lack of confidence in the news industry when it comes to exploiting the iPad.
Conde Nast is doing selective ambitious projects and a handful of titles are carefully pushing out sensitively planned apps, aware of the scrutiny of developing for this high-profile platform. (And, yes, Samsung Galaxy Tab and others will have their day.)
Beyond the traditional media industry, there have been few innovative models for iPad news apps. Flipboard is the highest profile, making a magazine from your feeds.
Pulse famously attracted the ire of the New York Times because of its use of feeds. And then there are the advanced reader tools like Instapaper, Interrupt! on and Reeder, all a new generation of RSS tools.
Matt Webb at design agency Berg was part of the team that worked on a brief from Bonnier, the Swedish media group, to explore reading experiences on touchscreen devices in late 2009.
That was clearly prescient, because Berg then adapted that work — a publishing platform called Mag+ — for the iPad when it launched in April, subsequently building an iPad version of Popular Science.
There are now five titles on the Mag+ platform, all published every month through the App Store. With that perspective developing for the iPad and working with a traditional publisher, what’s Webb’s view on how to approach a publishing strategy for iPad?
“Here’s how I’d frame the challenge,” he said. “We’re in an era where newspapers and magazines have dominated by distribution — that means getting in front of people [at the newspaper store] where they compete with other magazines and newspapers.
“Now they could be competing with five minutes of a delightful game, a blockbusting TV show, an expert in New York fashion on a custom blog or their own baby photos. That competition is actually between magazines and newspapers and a complex set of different feelings and experiences that are provoked in people.
“You don’t win by using a different cover or a splashy headline. What will win — and this is still an experience — is long-form journalism, really big pictures because they throw RGB and light out on to people’s faces, and doing things with friends.
Facebook represents the transformation of the web as we figure out what to do with all that. So what you end up with is a really nice period of experimentation.”
Webb points out that this crisis in the dynamics of the publishing industry has happened to others, too. New tools bridge the space between individuals and big companies.
“There used to be a big gap between the music industry and bands in pubs, and between newspapers and fanzines. But the internet allows a new middle ground for people who are passionate and happen to be good — Economic production and distribution has changed. So it’s not how we present the newspaper or magazine — it’s other people doing something similar from home or as a small hobby, a distributed collection.
“If those kind of ‘attention economics’ seem too much of a challenge, the outlook is ultimately positive. Newspapers ultimately resolved the challenge of blogging by incorporating blogs into their publications.
The call now is for publishers to step up and properly explore the app as a publishing model, as well as what the demands of a tablet mean.” — Guardian News & Media 2011