Dedicated iPad Content is No Media Savior
August 25, 2012
It seems that content tailored to the iPad is not the panacea media outfits hoped it would be. Gigaom examines the (lack of a) trend in “HuffPo, The Daily and the Flawed iPad Content Model.”
It has been just over a month since The Huffington Post launched their paid iPad content service, and already the site announces it is reducing the price. To zero. Meanwhile, News Corporation‘s dedicated iPad division The Daily has sharply reduced its staff and, it is rumored, may be on its way out altogether. What’s happening? Is the iPad not the savior of news organizations?
Writer Matthew Ingram suspects the culprit is the very way users have come to access media online. He explains:
“Whether media companies like it or not (and they mostly don’t), much of the news and other content we consume now comes via links shared through Twitter and Facebook and other networks, or through old-fashioned aggregators — such as Yahoo News or Google News — and newer ones like Flipboard and Zite and Prismatic that are tailored to mobile devices and a socially-driven news experience. Compared to that kind of model, a dedicated app from a magazine or a newspaper looks much less interesting, since by design it contains content from only a single outlet, and it usually doesn’t contain helpful things like links.”
This viewpoint, though probably correct, seems to leave little hope for traditional publishers who strive to make it in today’s media landscape. Ingram acknowledges that a couple of organizations who already had a very strong brand, like the New York Times, and some that target niche audiences are doing well. For the field as a whole, though, fresh ideas are desperately needed.
Cynthia Murrell, August 25, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
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