The iPad is Risen—Hallelujah?
As of this weekend, we have officially entered the “Age of the iPad.”
At Perfect Market, like so many others involved in the world of online publishing, we are keeping a close eye on Apple’s tablet. How can we not, when it’s been touted (by some) as the publishing industry’s “savior?”
Is Steve Jobs the Jesus for newspapers? (Some have argued that the iPad Easter launch was no mere coincidence; clever subliminal messaging by Apple.)
Jay Rosen (@jayrosen_nyu) of PressThink blog perhaps described the phenomenon best to the Huffington Post when he said, “Before the iPad came into our sights, there was already a series of headlines and desperate passages: will ______ save journalism? There’s this search for the savior, and the belief that there is one.”
We’ve noticed quite a few differences of opinions in the blogosphere. Even Perfect Market gadget fan (and COO) Steve Walker entered the fray and spent the weekend playing around at the Apple store. (See Walker’s post on the Analytics blog here.)
The Hype Cycle: Boosters vs. Cynics
When the iPad was first announced at MacWorld in January, bloggers and techies went gaga for it, convinced that it would transform publishing. It potentially offered new and better platforms for content and would be a boon to advertisers, tech and media pundits mused.
Now some people are less sure.
For example, Henry Blodget, editor-in-chief of The Business Insider writes: “The iPad-will-save-our-asses craze is based on a single, flawed premise: Consumers want to read magazines and newspapers electronically the same way they have read them for centuries in print — in a tightly bound content package produced by a single publisher. But 15 years of Internet history suggests that they don’t.”
To the nay-sayers, the iPad does little to change the major issues that have plagued publishing for the last decade or so.
Content Matter’s Barry Graubart argues that iPad does not change the fact that newspapers have been killed by the “total collapse of the classified ad market,” the reduction in print advertising, and the fact that, newspapers (online and off) have lost significant readership share in the past 10 years.
Graubart also cites what Ken Doctor calls “the attention gap” in his book, Newsonomics. Doctor maintains that as newspapers cut costs, they began to use more syndicated content, as a result, losing their uniqueness and their voice along the way. Therefore, the argument goes, news sources are basically interchangeable. So, an online news portal is just as good as their local newspaper for most users.
This is the major issue for online publishers both Blodget and Graubart argue. Why would users pay for content they can get for free?
One believer in the iPad-as-salvation school, thinks that the the iPad’s unique platform will make users purchase that which they would normally get for free. CNN Money’s Josh Quittner posits: “A great device is actually the key here: When you’ve invested in a tablet (or an iPhone or a Droid or a Kindle, etc.) and love it, you want to increase its functionality — with media. That’s why nearly half of the 75 million iPhone and iTouch users download one paid app a month, by the way, when they could get the same kind of stuff for free elsewhere.”
iPad: Think Outside Margins and Browsers
There does seem to be one thing everyone can agree on, publishers need to embrace the iPad — not as an opportunity to continue to serve up the same content in a “cooler” screen, but as an opportunity to be truly innovative, and think beyond print margins and Web browsers, in terms of user experience and intent.
Poynter’s Steve Myers has found, right now, publishers aren’t doing a good job of understanding what their users want.
Myers writes: “Felix Salmon and Jason Fry contend that these iPad demos don’t push the boundaries of what the device can do. The current approaches look to them too much like the walled garden approach that failed to take advantage of the interconnected nature of the Web. The whole ethos is a magazine-like one of a closed system with lots of control — the exact opposite, really, of the Internet, which is an open system where it’s very hard indeed to control the user experience.’”
Three days into the iPad Era it’s still too early to tell whether or not this will be publishing’s life saver. One thing is certain, Steve Job’s has figured out a way to give users a new device they really want. The onus is on publishers and advertisers to provide content that does the same.
Jose Antonio Vargas of the Huffington Post described this issue in a way that is closely related to what we at Perfect Market see is the “future of publishing” – understanding and serving the intent of users better.
“We’re living in a transition stage — a very exciting time in which the ‘me’ in ‘media’ continually and more effectively flexes its muscles. The media’s resurrection depends upon its understanding of that reality.”
— Lee Glandorf
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