All Things Digital has an interesting essay by John Squires: Apple, Google and the Publishers: Here’s How to Make Subscriptions Work. Squires used to be a senior executive at Time Inc and is founder of Next Issue Media a company that is stealthily developing a new approach to marketing and selling digital magazines on tablet platforms.
Squires echoes cries of anguish that have been coming from his peers in the consumer magazine industry:
… Keep ReadingIn recent weeks, we’ve heard growing
I like The Daily rather more than I was expecting. I also think that it has a commercial chance; it is a gamble, but it is potentially a very significant money-spinner. A lot will depend on the execution. Murdoch is prepared to take a big punt on the newspaper’s success, and like a good gambler he can do this because he is playing with a limited stake ($30 million in startup costs and $500k a week in running costs). He … Keep Reading
Tomorrow Apple and News Corp are launching a new periodical, The Daily, specifically designed for the iPad. This could be really exciting and I wish it well (I really do, but we will have some caveats later).
Erick Schonfeld over at TechCrunch decides to peg another think piece on iPad magazines on this event: iPad Mags Need a New Blueprint. This is not a blog up to the usual TechCrunch standards but it does attract an excellent … Keep Reading
John Battelle has blogged a very intriguing essay on the distinction between the dependent and the independent web. Here he makes the distinction:
… Keep ReadingThe Dependent Web is dominated by companies that deliver services, content and advertising based on who that service believes you to be: What you see on these sites “depends” on their proprietary model of your identity, including what you’ve done in the past, what you’re doing right now, what “cohorts” you might fall into based on third-
One of my colleagues yesterday sent out an email to those of our publishing partners who are not currently offering an iPad/iPhone app of their magazine through iTunes. You can read the email here. It rightly concentrates on the user benefits — that is the real point of producing an app version of the magazine. A successful magazine app is a good user experience and it should project and promote the magazine to a new and rapidly growing audience. … Keep Reading