The Guardian News App

The Guardian have recently released an iPhone App [iTunes Link] priced at £2.39 and for this small free they are promising to make news available to you on your iPhone for free.  What's more, the App offers off-line viewing, something that really is worth paying for.

So how does this compare to The Guardian's mobile site?
I have to admit that I was dubious about how good this App could be, given that the mobile site worked very well and The Guardian provide most (if not all) of their stories via RSS, therefore, do we need to spend £2.39.  The short answer is YES!
The UI is pretty and uncomplicated, the product does what it's supposed i.e. serve up news and with off-line reading I can load the paper before I board a flight and read on board.  

Pictured below is the home screen which is customisable:

By scrolling to the bottom of the home screen users are presented with photo galleries and the option to read selected columnists:

The App also provides trends and offers a screen dedicated to the most viewed news stories on The Guardian:

One interesting aspect of the App is that it offers the user the opportunity to listen to the latest Guardian podcasts, right within the App:

Sometimes you might just want to browse more sections and you can do that very easily:

Granted there is nothing really new here, everything that is provided I could have read / listened elsewhere, but isn't that the point? With this App I get it all in one place and The Guardian have made a significant statement: users are prepared to pay to access news.  The challenge for the industry is to replicate this and whether charging for the App and offfering free content there after is sustainable.  At the time of writing The Guardian App was the highest grossing application in the iTunes Store which would suggest a sizeable proportion of iPhone / iPod Touch owners have purchased the App.

I would recommend this App to anyone.

Here is the official Guardian video to promote the App:

Downsizing newspapers

The media industry seems to be in turmoil (like a lot of industries) due to its sheer size. Let's face it, the average newspaper is massive, in terms of staff, in terms of sections/categories and in terms of archive material. To save money and maximise revenue it would seem logical to me that any company would look at ways to cut costs.
How should newspapers do this? Should they reduce the amount of staff they employ?
Some would argue they already have, and to the detriment of quality journalism, but could the paper focus its energies on specialised content? Murdoch is quick to point to the success of the Wall Street Journal, is this the key? Charge for specialised content?
I'm not convinced, I believe that any paper whether in print or especially online should be getting enough eyeballs to generate advertising revenue.  If this revenue is not enough to cover costs and generate a profit then there is something wrong.  Who are your advertisers? How much are you charging? Is this representative of the coverage you offer your advertisers? Are you choosing advertisers that meet your user base?

So many questions but I feel those inside the media industry are simply not asking them and instead are pointing their fingers at rivals.

Is it greed? Could it be that the bottom line is corrupting their judgement and forcing media companies to pursue a holy grail which doesn't exist and by the time they realise this the industry will have consolidated? Meaning less media organisations and less titles.

Where is the innovation in the sector? Any innovation seems to be coming from new entrants i.e. sophisticated blogs and those who focus on niche markets, but the traditional media outlets seem stuck in their old ways.  Some regional papers do not even publish online or only offer a very basic service.

Where will the industry go, will it downsize and specialise or will it stagnate?

More News Madness

Following up on my previous posts here and here, News Corp have inspired at least one other media group to erect a pay wall.

Johnston Press websites will either ask users to pay £5 for a three-month subscription to read the full articles, or direct them to buy the newspapers.

Johnston is the first regional publisher in the UK to trial asking readers to pay for its online news. Source: BBC 

I can accept that regional papers have a different business model to the dailies, but at the same time it occurs to me that regional's are probably more exposed to the Internet than their national counterparts.

Reading through a local paper you will not find 'breaking news' nor will you find 'exclusive' content, but instead you read stories that are valuable to a local community.

COMMUNITY.

You will be hearing a lot more about community and specifically 'Local' as search engine giants google and Bing pursue this market with more vigour in the coming months.
Ever wonder how yell.com is doing? When was the last time you picked up a copy of the yellow pages? Exactly, local business search has moved online and into search engines.

With local people using search engines to search for local products, where is the scope for local businesses to advertise in local papers? Advertisers have always gone where the market is.

How can charging for content save a regional paper?  I don't believe it can, if anything it will alienate your existing customer base and at some point a decision needs to be made on whether you are a web publisher or a print publisher - you can't be both!

Let's take a step back.  Do regional / local papers need to be online in the first place?  Maybe not, certainly if you are a weekly publication where is the value being online? At least as a print only publication you can be more exclusive and focus entirely on your core market, thus building a new generation of readers and maximising advertising returns.

So, what of Johnston Press? I wouldn't pay a fiver a month for local content, and I'm sure some if not all of their readers will feel the same.  By erecting a pay wall around local content all you are doing is driving your readers to visit your competitors, who will be smaller and more targeted and who may well offer a more informative local news and entertainment service.

Did I mention they were free to use?

GPush not working at the minute

[Update: GPush is now working again.  Users will have to resubmit their settings from within the app]

For the last 2 weeks @tiveriasapps product GPush which enables push email (of sorts) on the iPhone has not worked. A quick google or Twitter search reveals that this is not a problem unique to me. So what are @tiveriasapps doing about the problem?
Apparently nothing. They are not responding to emails or tweets and by all accounts look like a business that has shut up shop.

So what can you do? For a start you should check whether you can use google's own exchange system. As long as there is not another exchange account present on your iphone then you can.
Exchange will be a more effective method of retrieving email and keeping your calendar and contacts in sync.
You can always use safari to keep up-to-date with all your emails and the mobile interface in gmail is really good.

If it's GPush that you really need then you'll have to keep trying @tiveriasapps and hope that they resolve whatever issue they are having.