Posted: October 28th, 2010 | Author: Jon Lund
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Flipboard and Wired are two of the most acclaimed and celebrated iPad-magazines. Both are, however, willing to embrace other platforms the minute they’re here. Or are they?
“I’m sure it’s only a matter of time before we’re on other platforms” Mike McCue, CEO of Flipboard told me in an email correspondence, when I asked him if they were planning to make an Android-version of their popular app. (Read my post on what Flipboard is here)
Chris Anderson, editor-in-chief of Wired Magazine, was even more to the point, when I asked him if he believed in cross-platform iPad/Android/Chrome-tablet publishing. “Yes!” was the brief answer he wrote back to me.
Helped by Adobe
Chris Andersons statement shouldn’t come as a big surprise, however. Since the initial announcement of the Wired iPad app, Wired have stressed they didn’t plan to play only within Apples walled garden. Being developed in close cooperation with Adobe, the Wired iPad app has been build for easy conversion to other platforms.
Only this week, Adobe unveiled their new digital publishing suite, making it possible for publishers easily to make… yes, right, “Wired-style digital magazine” (in the words of Mashable) ready for, in Adobes words, ”cross-platform viewers (running iOS or Adobe AIR®) on the most popular tablets, smart-phones, and devices, as well as through mobile marketplaces such as the Apple App Store and Google Apps Marketplace.”
Strain on editorial ressources
Making the iPad-version of Wired magazine is neither cheap nor easy, however. (Right now it takes some extra +20% editorial ressources for Wired; they’re hoping to get this down to 10-15% as their processes improve - Chris Anderson told me – read on in this post for more details). And no matter how clever Adobes new tools are, cross-platform publication is bound to tie some extra work in the process. Not only the operating system of the viewing devices changes – the hardware on which the tablet edition will have to run will also differ. The different screen-sizes alone will impose burdens to the Wired crew, in their efforts to “a well-designed package, with all the pieces designed to work together and create a coherent whole”, as Chris Anderson put it.
Flipboard: first things first
Mike McCue is aware that cross-platform publication might not just be another walk in the park. The real question is not if Flipboard is going to be available on other platforms, but when this will happen. ”How much time between now and then is the real question” he said.
“Right now we are focused on rounding out our product on one platform (rather than de-focusing my team across multiple platforms). That one platform is obviously the iPad because we think it is far and away the best platform for the Flipboard experience with lots of user growth and exciting publisher/content opportunities. It is the epicenter of everything in our space right now.”
To Flipboard it probably also matters, that they still have some way to go, before the product itself – their social tablet magazine – is fully there. After having acquired Ellerdale this summer (official press release here), they’re still working hard on integrating the Ellerdale technology into Flipboard itself (trying to impose a semantic element to the way news menitoned by your friends are prioritized). Actually the priority of getting this stuff right might very well be what Mike McCue hints at in his “rather than de-focusing my team across multiple platforms”).
In our email-correspondence Mike McCue actually ends up stating they’re “watching the rest of the tablet space closely and will be open minded to those if and when someone builds an amazing tablet that we think our users will love.” Apparently not just any Android-tablet will do!
Want to know more?
Mike McCue also elaborated on how Flipboard is turning tweets upside down and on the perspective in the semantic filtering in response to my questions. I hope to get back to these in separate posts.
If you’d like to know more about what Chris Anderson said to me, I’ve written these three additional posts for you:
Posted: October 13th, 2010 | Author: Jon Lund
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Få magasiner – for slet ikke at tale om aviser – har lavet så helhjertet en iPad-udgave som det amerikanske tech-magasin Wired. Forleden fangede jeg Chris Anderson, Wireds chefredaktør, på email og spurgte ham hvordan det er gået. Og fik svar som ikke før har været offentligt tilgængelige: Hvor mange eksemplarer sælger Wired af deres iPad-udgave, hvad koster det at lave den – og hvad er udviklingsplanerne? Læs om svarene i tre artikler på min blog.
Sælger i ti-tusindvis om måneden
Wireds iPad-magasin sælger ifølge Chris Anderson “in the multiple tens of thousands” hver måned. Og tallet stiger i takt med at flere og flere får iPads.
Det første nummer solgte dog væsentligt mere. Næsten 110.000 eksemplarer blev det til. Men det havde også i den grad nyhedens interesse.
Læs hele historien om hvor meget Wireds iPad sælger – tal der ikke tidligere har været fremme – på min blog: Wired sells “in the multiple tens of thousands” iPad copies a month
Over 20 procent ekstraarbejde til redaktionen
Det er ikke let at lave Wireds iPad-udgave. Faktisk ligger der over 20 procent ekstraarbejde for redaktionen i den nye udgivelsesproces. Et tal som måske falder til 10-15 procent, når først den er rigtigt indarbejdet.
Læs hele historien om hvor meget og hvad det kræver for Wired at lave deres iPad-udgave på min blog. Ikke før sete tal + billedgennemgang af forskelle og ligheder: Wired on iPad takes up +20% extra editorial resources
Socialt medie-lag på trapperne
Wired på iPad fungerer på mange måder rigtigt godt. Men mulighederne for at kommentere, tweete eller “synes godt om” har det hidtil skortet på. Men ikke meget længere. “We’ve got a proper social media layer coming into our app later this year” fortæller Chris Anderson i en ny konkret melding. Og fortæller også, at de blandt andet har ladet sig inspirere af et andet meget rost iPad-magasin, Flipboard
Læs mere Wireds sociale ambitioner – og hvordan ukontrolerbare kommentarer og andre sociale funktioner kan passes sammen med en rolig magasinlæse-oplevelse her på min blog: Wired to roll out new social networking layer to iPad magazine this year – takes tips from social iPad-magazine Flipboard
Posted: October 7th, 2010 | Author: Jon Lund
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Before the end of the year a complete social networking layer is to be rolled out as a part of a new Wired magazine iPad-app, updating the app first introduced in May this year. So says Chris Anderson editor in chief at Wired magazine in an email-interview I had the chance to conduct with him (I briefly know Chris Anderson from a conference he and I both attended last year, resulting in this co-written post). Why is this interesting? Because Wired magazine is among the vanguard of iPad publishers, staking out new ground for the entire publishing industry.
"Tell us on Facebook"-button in Wired iPad-article
The emailing took place after I had spotted – and blogged – a new “thin” Facebook-integration in one particular article in the November issue of Wired (which you can read here: Wired iPad goes social: integrates Facebook as external pages).
In my blog post I called the move “pretty unambitious” and noted that I as reader actually care about what others think of the article I’m reading, and that there surely has to be ways to make this way more prominent. And in my starting email to Chris Anderson I followed up by stating that I am “looking forward to more in-depth twitter-like functionality”
“We’ve got a proper social media layer coming into our app later this year” he replied back. And although he didn’t want to go to much into details before the launch, I did get a little something more out him.
“Looking forward to more in-depth twitter-like functionality. Personally I think Flipboard is awesome. Might be some learnings there” I wrote to him, in the correspondence. (Flipboard is an iPad-app which takes your twitter-account, grabs all the links, and produces a magazine-like flip-pages experience out of all the goodies the ones you follow care to mention (read a post I did on Flipboard here)).
The social iPad magazine Flipboard from which Wired is taking tips
Chris picked up on this one, stating “I love Flipboard, too, and we’ll definitely be taking tips from them”.
The combination of the somewhat lofty “social media layer”-terminology combined with Chris’ appraisal of Flipboard, gives you a hint something is brewing. Though it’s kind of tough to say exactly what.
Before speculating to hard, one should be aware that the concept of the Wired iPad is one of well-packaged control. The Wired iPad edition is the printed magazine translated as gently and intelligent as possible to the tablet form factor. In the correspondence I asked Chris Anderson to the defining characteristics of their iPad app. This is how he replied:
“Magazines get their value from the packaging of content, with design, long-form writing, luxurious photography, illustration etc. (…) So the notion of a well-designed package, with all the pieces designed to work together and create a coherent whole, stands out from the atomized world of web content.”
The navigation pane functionality in Wireds iPad-app. Will comments be displayed the same way?
From this I get that we should expect a social layer which respects the unity of the Wired magazine iPad edition. That is: comments won’t inline in articles, and will generally be presented in a way, that interferes as little as possible with the reading experience itself. Most likely a seperate pane will appear when tapping or swiping the iPad in a special way. Like the way the navigation panes works in the Wired iPad app today. Probably a little “share”-icon next to the title or at the end of the article will urge you to spread the news and indicate of the activity of commenting.
Confronting this approach to the Flipboard-approach reveals to very different guiding principles. The Flipboard-approach relies on a single set of people to follow, but from thereon Flipboard publishes whatever these persons care to link to, no matter where the content originates from – and no matter what “editorial package” the content originally appeared in. I therefore take the “we’ll definitively be taking tips from them” to indicate high standards, more than a copying of the basic concept.
The same "Tell us on Facebook"-button article on wired.com
One of the interesting things to see is to which extend the social media layer of the wired.com website will integrate to the social media layer of the ipad-edition. Chances are they will, I’d say. Actually this is one of the great strenghts of the Wired cross-platform publishing (print, web, tablet) – that the social activity around the content can be shared across platforms as well. When the same article is to be found on wired.com website, fully equipped with commenting and social media integration, the discussion on wired.com and on the Wired iPad-edition could actually be the very same. Meaning that a comment made on wired.com would automatically show up on the Wired iPad-edition as well and vice versa.
By the same token, sharing an article would also be platform-independent. Otherwise sharing an iPad-article would be somewhat in vain, since it would require the one you share the article with to actually be a Wired-iPad-edition subscriber himself in order to access the article. But when the article is also on the web, the non-iPad-edition subscriber will just open up the web-edition instead.
Related posts, based on the same interview:
During the email-correspondance, Chris Anderson pointed to several other very interesting aspects of the Wired iPad-experience. I’ve written those up in seperate posts. Read on:
Wired sells “in the multiple tens of thousands” iPad copies a month
Wired on iPad takes up +20% extra editorial resources
Posted: May 3rd, 2009 | Author: Jon Lund
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This Tuesday Chris Anderson and I discussed his new book “Free” (scheduled for release in July). The book is about why and how the ever-declining costs of storage, bandwidth and processing power leads digital goods and services to a new modus operandi in which marginal costs of producing and selling are in effect zero.
This marks a shift from the physical to the digital economy. If you’re into digital, you now have what no-one else have had before: the possibility of producing and giving away your digital goods and services without inflicting any costs on yourself.
And this mere possibility, argues Chris, creates a force actually drawing prices to zero, leaving you to find other ways of making money on your product or services.
Chris and I had dinner in Oslo, where we were gathered for the Gulltaggen conference (Chris were giving a keynote presentation the next day). “Have you ever heard of the Danish Free Newspaper war?” I asked Chris when the subject came to “Free”. “It’s an example of “free” in the physical world” I continued and added: “Though it ended up a catastrophe for all parties involved”.
While eating us through small pieces of Japanese style fish, moose in pastry and deep-fried crab I told him the story. And promised to make a wrap-up in English. So here it is:
“Double free”
On October 6 2006 “Nyhedsavisen”, a new Danish daily newspaper hit the streets. A quality newspaper staffed with 100 journalists and ambitions of being the largest Danish newspaper with a daily circulation on 500.000 and 1 million readers (total Danish population equals some 5,5 million). The newspaper should feature an editorial mix prioritizing both prize-winning critical journalism and stories close to the everyday life of ordinary Danes.
The prizing of Nyhedsavisen was simple: it was free. And, as something entirely new: it was (intended) to be delivered to the homes of all Danes – without any costs. Not only the newspaper itself was free, delivery was free as well. It was in effect “double-free”.
The front-page of an October 2006 edition of Nyhedsavisen
Icelandic intrusion
Behind the Nyhedsavisen launch was the Icelandic media group Dagsbrun owned by Icelandic investment company Baugur group. During 2005 Dagsbrun had researched the European market in order to find the most suitable country in which to try to duplicate the success of Icelandic newspaper Frettabladid. And Denmark was chosen.
Frettabladid was founded in 2001 and had managed to be the best-read newspaper among the Icelandics (population totaling 320.000) battling the only other Icelandic newspaper Morgunbladid by employing for the first time the “double-free” model.
The business model
Nyhedsavisen (and Frettabladid) are in this way examples of “Free” in the physical world. But in the physical world the laws of zero-marginal costs doesn’t apply. On the contrary: printing and delivering newspapers to new households is very expensive. So how come the zero-kroners prizing?
The answer is that the Nyhedsavisen business model were build on having others to pay. To be more specific Nyhedsavisen aimed at three different revenue streams, the first one being the traditional newspaper model, where advertisers pay to have ads in the newspaper. If you’re able to get 1 million Danes to read your newspaper, you’re able to sell those eyeballs to advertisers as well.
The second revenue stream also aimed at advertisers, but not by offering advertising in the newspaper itself. Instead, Nyhedsavisen would take advantage of the fact is had a direct contact to all Danish households before 7 in the morning. Nyhedsavisen would take what would normally have been a cost – the distribution – and turn it into an independent revenue-stream, making money from distribution of printed advertisement catalogues and brochures alongside the distribution of Nyhedsavisen itself.
The third revenue streams would stem from the other Danish media. Out of the 100 journalists, 35 were employed at the news network part of Nyhedsavisen, a bureau in the newspaper which should deliver and sell news wire services to other Danish media.
Flooded with newspapers
Nyhedsavisen thereby aimed to compete the entire existing Danish newspaper industry, including the three large nationwide dailies Berlingske Tidende, Politiken and Jyllandsposten, the two nationwide tabloid-papers Ekstra Bladet and BT and the existing free daily newspapers delivered through public transportation or handed out on the streets, MetroXpress and (Berlingske owned) Urban.
And all of these took the threat seriously, and decided to fight the intruder in an attempt to defend their position on the Danish media market.
Right after the initial announcement of the to-come double-free newspaper, Berlingske Tidende (the oldest Danish newspaper, first published 1749) answered back launching their own “double-free” newspaper, “Dato”. This they did on August 16 2006, some two month before Nyhedsavisen would eventually launch. Berlingske thereby introduced their free newspaper number two, the first being the “single-free” Urban (which again was launched in 2001 in response to the launch of MetroExpress).
The day before, however, the regional daily Nordjyske introduced two free newspapers on top of the paid daily Nordjyske. Centrum Miórgen was single-free, distributed in the morning traffic, whereas Centrum Aften was freely delivered in the afternoon in northern part of Jutland. The day after (august 17) the publisher behind Politiken, Jyllandsposten and EkstraBladet, JP/Politikens hus launched their double-free daily “24 timer”. And on August 21 MetroXpress launched an afternoon-edition in supplement to the usual MetroXpress morning edition.
When Nyhedsavisen finally arrived, Denmark was flooded with newspapers. On top of my paid subscriptions I’d now find both Nyhedsavisen, 24timer and Dato in my mailbox, and on my way to work I’d be able to read both Urban and MetroXpress in the metro. On my way home, I’d be able to read the afternoon-edition of MetroXpress.
The immediate effect of all this was twofold: the average Dane was getting weary of all the paper he suddenly was forced to have inside his home – and the price of print advertising went down in response the massive growth in supply.
Casualties and deaths
This free newspaper war went on for over two years and caused the entire industry to bleed. On top generally declining circulation for all (paid) printed newspapers the cost of producing and distribution additional free newspapers added significant losses to the financial results.
Berlingske which was bought by British Mecom i early 2006 was barely profitable i 2006 (revenue in the surroundings of 650-700 million USD) and decided in 2007 to back out of the war closing down their double-free Dato, realizing losses of 35 million USD. (Though Berlingske maintained their single-free Urban, thereby participating in the attempt to both drain money the Danish mediamarket and offering yet free alternative to Nyhedsavisen).
MetroXpress shot down their afternoon edition after only three months, with losses of some 1 million USD.
After one year Nordjyske eventually also gave up on their Centrum Aften double-free, and merged Centrum Morgen with 24timer. (The Nordjyske engagement in the war however tried out a completely new initiative, editorially combining several print- and webtitles in a very interesting combination – for more see this post).
Show-down: Nyhedsavisen vs. 24timer
This left 24timer and Nyhedsavisen alone on the scene, trying to wear each other down. Nyhedsavisen were backed by the Icelandic investors, claiming they had “enough” money to carry on to the bitter end. In 2006, 2007 and 2008 the revenues of JP/Politikens Hus totalled a little more than 600 million USD, with EBIT of respectively +20 million USD, -25 million USD and -30 million USD, wearing the equity down some 25 % to aprox. 125 million USD in 2008.
The costs of producing and distributing the double-free newspaper was – at least during 2007 – around 200.000 USD a day for each of the papers.
The free delivery was one of the main obstacles, the engaged parties faced. It simply turned out for all of them to be extremely difficult to manage delivering the newspaper at peoples home before 7 in the morning. As a consequence JP/Politikens Hus gradually shifted the distribution of 24timer to the single-free handing out in the morning traffic. In march 2008 this shift was total.
This partial surrender from 24timer came after Dagsbrun/Baugur group in January found themselves forced to back out of the Danish market. Instead of abandoning Nyhedsavisen altogether, however, a new majority-investor, Morten Lund, entered the scene. Apparently 24timer didn’t find it necessary to keep up the pressure, reasoning a traffic-distributed existence would do enough harm eventually to kill Nyhedsavisen off.
In may 2008 24timer merged with MetroXpress. At that time Nyhedsavisen actually had managed to bring down the cost of delivery to some 20 cents per issue, only 25 percent more than the corresponding cost of distributing the newspapers in the traffic. But little it helped: on September 1, 2008 Nyhedsavisen was no longer able to pay its bills, and was declared bankrupt.
Today we’re left with but two remains from the Free Newspaper War: 24timer still lives on, partly owned by JP/Politiken, who by that token got itself what it didn’t have before: a single-free newspaper. But also the website of Nyhedsavisen – avisen.dk – has its own life, now under the auspecies of Danish social network-publisher Freeway and a-pressen, the media division of the Danish Labour movement (!)
Could the “double-free” model have worked?
Despite the fruitless attempt to prove the double-free business model during the two years of free newspaper war, the conclusion is not entirely clear. Surely it didn’t work. But it might have functioned under other, less hostile, circumstances.
Particularly: the revenue streams from the traditional newspaper-advertising model dried out for Nyhedsavisen due to the fierce competition on the media market in which the excess of supply ensured radicularly low prices. Also the markets suspicion that Nyhedsavisen might not be able to make it also discouraged media agencies from engaging in longer-term Nyhedsavisen-campaigns.
Also, the distribution services never got to work: At first Nyhedsavisen was planned to be distributed in a joint venture with Post Denmark, the official Danish Post, who – on top of their knowledge and professionalism in distribution – had access to an essential asset: keys to all doors of the houses in the large cities. The use of these keys, however, was deemed illegial by the Danish Competition Authorities (after JP/Politiken and Berlingske had filed their complains – while these two ironically entered into their own agreement on swapping keys with one another). Also the massive demand for paperboys to actually deliver all the free newspapers around Denmark caused severe problems for the distribution (all the players were forced to import immigrant-labour from primarily Poland, who then worked their way around Denmark by night, trying to make sense of the signs in the streets in order to figure out their routes in order to deliver the free newspaper in their trolleys correctly).
Taking into account that the third revenue stream – the news network delivering and selling news wire services to other Danish media – for various other reasons didn’t turn out a cash-cow either, Nyhedsavisen was in effect left with no revenues at all.
— — — —
During the free newspaper war I covered the events in a series of posts, especially focusing on the newmedia-aspects of the war (which I have not dealt with in my wrap-up). Here’s a number of them:
19-04-2008: 24timer goes social – fully incorporates social network Mingler
19-02-2008: Freeway.dk goes portal – encapsulating avisen.dk content
19-01-2008: Standing Danish newspaper-war at (internetbased) turning point?
10-10-2006: Doc Searls: “Nordjyske’s really innovative”
04-10-2006: Avisen.dk: First fullsize preview
03-10-2006: The three drivers of the current media explosion
21-08-2006: When the going gets tough, Nyhedsavisen starts blogging…
23-08-2007: Wikiscanner, Mahalo and avisen.dk: the web strikes back
14-08-2006: Sneak preview – now they’re really here – Nordjyske’s new newspapers and website
04-07-2006: “Nyhedsavisen” in aggressive online-move – presumably
