Magazine App Is A Sign Of Magazines To Come
2:57 am, January 26th, 2009, Giles Turnbull
This is a page from The Magazine, an ezine-in-an-app that’s now available on the App Store for a dollar.
By itself, it’s not much to write home about in my opinion. The presentation is amateurish and the content not terribly interesting. And there simply isn’t very much of it. Not my kind of magazine at all, frankly.
But what’s more interesting is the concept of a mag-as-an-app.
I think it’s something that we’re going to see the print magazine business adopting and embracing, because it offers them a way to boost their flagging sales without having to mess around printing expensive ink on expensive paper, and then having to cart all the printed paper around in expensive trucks.
The world of print media is in crisis. Sure, you say, the entire global economy is in crisis. Yes but print has been declining for years as sales fall and costs spiral upwards and out of sight. The current global situation is (or is going to be) the final straw for many publications that have been teetering on the edge for so many months.
Much effort has been put into ezines and webmags and emags and whatever else you want to call them, but the focus has always been on what are essentially customized web sites or big bulky PDF files. I’ve not yet seen something electronic that could really equate – even vaguely – to the concept of a magazine.
Because for me (and I think for many other people), the whole point of magazines is that they are mobile. You buy one when you’re out and about. To read in the coffee shop, or on the plane or train. Magazines are made to be pushed into handbags, briefcases and laptop carriers. They’re the right size, and the right feel, to be a portable, pleasurable reading experience.
This app serves as a useful pointer in a particular direction. The iPhone’s touch screen is the closest digital alternative to portable, pleasureable reading that I’ve seen anywhere. It offers magazines a fabulous opportunity.
What I’d like to see – what I expect to see – on the App Store over the next 12 months is branded apps that put a magazine in your pocket. I don’t know which financial model will work best (perhaps a single app that auto-updates its content, or a reader app into which you download magazines (as you can already do with Stanza), or a model where you download and pay for each issue of each magazine as and when you want it). It’s up to the publishers to experiment.
But somehow, the big name mags are going to start experimenting in this space sooner rather than later. I can’t wait to be able to download an Economist, a Monocle, maybe even a Private Eye, when I’m about to embark on a train journey.
Posted by Giles Turnbull in Media, Opinions, Software, iPhone | Comment on this article
Does the USA Today app fit into what you’re thinking?
David Price, on January 26th, 2009 at 3:38 am
Don’t forget Zinio, a web app/digital kiosk where you can read some magazines. But frankly I kind of doubt big mags like Economist will adobt this. Not because they lack the money but they still put most of their budget in their print editions instead of trying to innovate on the web and thus getting ahead of the curve & generating more interest = visitors = some more income. They will wine about the evil web that is taking all their ad revenue though. Such a shame.
Chuck, on January 26th, 2009 at 8:20 am
A good article except for the end. Traditional mag publishers are terrified of going digital and letting go of paper editions completely. They cannot see a viable model there especially as people dislike having to pay for content on the web. It’s a wiki approach or nothing imo.
chano, on January 26th, 2009 at 10:02 am
I swear I wrote this blog post before seeing your article here. The connection you make between look and feel and the iPhone screen is very important; I hadn’t considered this before but now you’ve said it, it’s obvious.
Tim Holmes, on January 27th, 2009 at 9:30 am
Definitely a sign of things to come and something B2B media can take on board too.
The bigger mags may try it but it will be the nimble, more agile start-up publishers who will see this as opportune. Adding another headache for the print media companies!
Jonathan, on January 28th, 2009 at 6:41 am
Not the first though – I posted a review of the first iPhone magazine, PMc, back in October.
Andrew Losowsky, on January 28th, 2009 at 7:43 am
What rubbish – the link to print magazine format is tenuous at best. This is repurposed website content, not repurposed magazine stuff…as teh writer says, the content is not up to the standard of what he would read in print.
My point being that it is an okay app, interesting even, but to draw a parallel to magazines is stupid. Not that I am defending print.
Like many others, I know exactly where things are going. Like in music where albums are a collection of tracks, searched and purchased separately, so too magazines and websites will become collections of individual content/articles – and browser apps like this will be the norm.
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