Comments on: Apple iPad – great for journalism, but still tough to make money

By: Waiting for the second generation digital media product | Digital Asset Management

Tue, 13 Apr 2010 06:08:24 +0000

[...] Ipad is great for telling stories, but does not in itself make it easier to make money. One reason is that success in this new media landscape requires a radically different way of thinking. [...]

By: Waiting for the second generation digital media product | BetaTales

Waiting for the second generation digital media product | BetaTales — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 19:21:26 +0000

By: How newspapers offer less Unique Value than before | BetaTales

How newspapers offer less Unique Value than before | BetaTales — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 07:38:38 +0000

[...] we can just start to charge on iPad, can we not? Sure, but remember this platform also will offer content from thousands of other sources, most of them free. The “situational dominance” of a single media player is lost and as such also part of [...]

By: John Einar Sandvand

John Einar Sandvand — Sun, 28 Feb 2010 05:02:58 +0000

Thanks for your comment, Per Helge!
In my view the main fight in the longer perspective is not which technology will be best for e-readers/tablets, but which distribution platform that will dominate the consumer market.
What I don’t like with Amazon and Apple is that they both so far has provided closed platforms for content distribution. From a business perspective I can see why they do it, but really it is not friendly to customers in the long run.
My guess – and hope – is that they both will be forced to choose a more open path in the future – making it easier for content providers to produce for different platforms and for users to be platform-agnostic about where they consume the content they have purchased.

By: Per Helge Seglsten

Per Helge Seglsten — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 15:17:34 +0000

But iPad isn’t the only pad around. Say e-reader, and everybody goes “Kindle!” Say tablet, and everybody goes “iPad!” And of course Amazon and Apple are the two companies that has the most user friendly platform for buying content to their devices. But I really can’t imagine that they will be allowed to keep that position unchallenged for very long. So while we still are in charge of content, I think we should let Apple and amazone be, and consentrate on making platforms that enables us to offer our content on any device. There are so many hardware producers out there that if market and competition laws work as they usually do, the entrance fee for content on these devices will move towards zero, and the hardware producers will have to use technical specifications as the weapon in the fight for customers – as they’ve done up to now.
However, if we can’t find a way to make advertisers happy on these new devices sometime real soon I don’t think we need to worry about who gets the revenue of our content anyway. I’m afraid it’s only a matter of time before mobile- internet- and search engine providers will provide the conent they need to make their adverticing spaces even more attractive. By buying up the old content providers, or by putting us out of business.
I think e-paper and pads has an excellent chance of being a real blessing for newspapers and magazine publishers witihin very few years (will we even be printing at all in 7 years?), and as a guy who started his journalist career in 1987 with a typewriter and paper, I am really looking forward to publish the first 3D issue of Hjemmet on a housewife friendly tablet of some kind. But if we can’t find a way to sell ads in our digital future I’m afraid that future will not be like we hope it will.

By: The new visions of digital magazines | BetaTales

The new visions of digital magazines | BetaTales — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 05:02:33 +0000

[...] to come, all inspired by the launch of Apple’s iPad tablet. As I have pointed out before, iPad is a great tool for journalism, but it will still be tough to make money. Publishers will work hard to try to [...]

By: Tom

Tom — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 09:49:40 +0000

and once you have your iPad application ready for your iPad customers to download on their iPad. You must add a little code to the top of your website that checks on which device the visitor is visiting your website. If it’s an iPad, it should redirect the visitor to a page where it tells them to download the iPad (tell them too that the experience will be much greater). It might not seem very user friendly at first to take away any access to the regular website for any iPad users, but I believe you will have to do this. and if your iPad application is really great. People will not mind (but only if your iPad app is really great!). Then, you will find new revenue streams from the iPad, for sure.