BackWill Apple News be a Flipboard killer?
The app resembles Flipboard allowing people to read the links they'd see on Twitter in a kind of digital magazine
Premium
Apple Inc. announced on Monday a news hub that draws content from such major media outlets as ESPN, The New York Times, Wired, and The Atlantic. The app provides a clean, consistent look and feel for articles coming from various news outlets. Articles can also integrate graphics, photos, and video. It is called, simply, News.
“News is smart, so the more I read, the better it gets at showing me stories I’m interested in," says Susan Prescott of Apple. The app allows readers to select favourites, which are either specific publications or specific topics.
The app resembles Flipboard, a popular app that pulls content from users’ social media accounts and presents it as a sleek digital publication of its own, allowing people to read the links they’d see on Twitter in a kind of digital magazine.
For years there has been speculation that Apple or Twitter would buy Flipboard. By building its own version, Apple is creating a way for people to start associating their news-reading routine with their phones, rather than with applications that are easily accessed through other smartphone platforms.
Flipboard chief executive officer Mike McCue says the start-up’s app is different from Apple’s because of its focus on social networks and sharing with friends. He says he isn’t worried about the competition.
“We’ve had Google ship a supposed Flipboard killer; we’ve had Facebook do that with Facebook Paper; we’ve seen Yahoo! do that, and now Apple," McCue said in an interview during Apple’s WWDC event. “We have a close partnership with Apple, and we’ve known about this for a while. We’ve talked about a few potential things we can do together in the future." McCue declined to comment on any acquisition talks that may have occurred.
Publishers will keep 100% of the advertising revenue they sell inside News; the news was first reported by Recode. In addition, Apple will help sell advertising within the app, taking a 30% cut of that revenue.
The company also takes its standard 30% cut from subscriptions sold through the outlets’ own apps. Bloomberg is one of the media partners participating in the app.
Tom Standage, deputy editor at The Economist, says that the publication may run some advertising in the app, but is not expecting to make any significant money from Apple News.
“We don’t see ad revenue as the main way of doing this. We hope it will encourage people to try our app and visit our website," he says.
The publication is choosing some articles to show through the app, aiming for Apple users who don’t regularly read the magazine.
“That is our biggest challenge: reaching the people out there who ought to be reading The Economist, but think it’s not for them," says Standage. While the magazine generally requires a subscription to read articles beyond a few freebies a month, the articles in Apple News will be entirely free.
The New York Times will feature about 30 stories on Apple News that appear on its NYT Now app, which the Times recently made free.
The stories will span various sections, but will number far fewer than what the Times offers in its full news report, which requires a subscription for readers who want to read more than 10 articles a month.
In an interview, New York Times chief executive officer Mark Thompson says the company hopes to gain valuable insight into people’s reading habits through the app, in addition to expanding its audience. “What we look for is the opportunity to get our journalism in front of the widest possible audience," Thompson says.
As Apple introduces the new home for news on iPhones and iPads, the company is getting rid of its last shot to make one. The company will discontinue Newsstand, a news-reading app it launched in 2012, according to Recode.
While Newssstand was designed to keep news apps from being lost in the sea of other apps on people’s phones, some publishers felt it meant their work was buried even deeper. Bloomberg
feedback@livemint.com
Unlock a world of Benefits! From insightful newsletters to real-time stock tracking, breaking news and a personalized newsfeed – it's all here, just a click away! Login Now!
