Limited Time Only

I got an email from the New York Times this morning saying “Limited time only: Save 50% on home delivery + more”. The obvious reflection is who has limited time? Me or the New York Times? Time is on the side of the reader or subscriber. While the publishers thrash around trying to figure out how to preserve their former revenue streams, consumers can enjoy the many choices of web sites, blogs, RSS feeds, tweets, and iPad apps to get the news they want, when they want it, and in the format they want to read. A major milestone in my reading history happened last week. I started reading Business Week in 1967 and have read it faithfully every Friday for the last 44 years. My subscription ran out in February and for some reason I was not contacted to renew it. I signed up for the new iPad Business Week app and read it instead. I will never have another print version. Too bad in a way but the iPad version is so much easier to read, to browse, to enjoy. The New York Times, on the other hand, is not easy and enjoyable to read on the iPad. They don’t have the right model yet. For general news I find news.google.com to be the best overall and when reading news on the iPad I use Pulp. Pulp lets me organize the news the way I want to read it, not the way the New York Times wants me to read it. The bottom line: the New York Times has limited time.

Tags: ipad, New York Times, news

Kindle Sales Defy iPad

PC World Magazine says “Amazon Kindle Sales Defy IPad by Rising Each Month in Q2“.  This does not come as a surprise for a number of reasons. One is that the Kindle is a great product that is highly intuitive and easy to use. People get addicted to it and they tell their friends and family about it. I have been wanting to read Michael Lewis’s The Big Short but it was not available until recently on the Kindle. I waited. Great book, by the way. I know people who told me a few years ago that they had no interest in the Kindle but now are addicted. It was a popular gift item last holiday season and with the price reduced (again) it has become attractive to a much larger audience. Another factor is that the iPad is not the Kindle killer that some had thought. As described here a number of times, the iPad is great but not for for long periods and not for reading outdoors. Summer reading is the sweet spot for the Kindle.

Now we have the new Kindle DX.  The “old” Kindle DX was already quite nice.  We have been using it as an “electronic flight bag” for roughly 15,000 approach and airport charts. The Kindle reduces clutter in the cockpit but the iPad does a better job as an EFB since it has numerous aviation applications that enable pilots to calculate weight and balance, get the latest weather, and file flight plans directly with the FAA. Now that we have the iPad the DX can revert to the original reason we got it — reading newspapers and magazines. The DX is great for books too but the smaller Kindle is more comfortable to hold. The sweetspot for the DX is magazines, newspapers, and documents. Putting the DX on a stand and flipping through the Sunday paper is a treat. And now with the new DX it will be even better.

The new 9.7″ diagonal, high contrast e-ink screen has 50% better contrast than it’s predecessor. The Kindle DX display looks and reads like real paper, with no glare. With the free 3G wireless (no monthly payments and no contract) and the lower price, the DX is going to be a good choice for many people. Battery life is great too — read for up to 1 week on a single charge; turn wireless off and read for up to two weeks. The built-in PDF Reader has enhanced zoom capability to easily view small print and detailed tables or graphics. For professionals who have thousands of documents it will be a natural.

There will be a lot of competition for tablets and e-readers but from what I have seen so far the iPad and the Kindle, and the Kindle DX are the best. I love my iPad but for reading books the Kindle is better. I especially like being able to go back and forth between the iPhone 4, the Kindle, the Kindle DX, and the Kindle e-reader on the iPad and always have the bookmark synced to where I last was reading. As for newspapers and magazines the next move needs to be from the publishers who seem frozen with indecision. They want to charge a lot of money for their content but most of us don’t want to pay. Why pay for a New York Times app on the iPad when you can read the New York Times blogs on Pulse for free? As for magazines there is great potential for electronic versions but I don’t think people will pay the $4.99 for each new issue that Time and Wired are charging. I expect a lot of news about the news in the months ahead.

Tags: approach plates, Aviation, documents, dx, e-book, e-ink, e-reader, efb, flight charts, ipad, Kindle, kindle dx, magazines, New York Times, newspapers, pdf, time magazine, wired

Conversational Media Summit – Part 3

The main strategic takeaway for me from the CM Summit was the stark contrast between the two interviews John Batelle had with Arthur Sulzberger, Jr. and Arianna Huffington.

I first met Arthur at a technology conference roughly 10 years ago. He had a big head-start in adapting to the changes from the Internet, he hired some excellent people to work on an Internet strategy, and I was optimistic that the New York Times would be a leader in making the transition to the digital age of publishing. His opening comment at the closing of yesterday’s conference may have proved me wrong. He said that “digital is the future – in the long run.” The addition of the term “in the long run” offers a glimpse of how things may be going in the New York Times transformation.

At the launch of the iPad, the New York Times proudly presented their news app. Of all the more than 100 apps on my iPad, I would have to put it near the bottom. The name of it tells the whole story – Editor’s Choice. If there is one thing we all know about the Web, it is that the long tail prevails. In other words, readers make their own choices as to what they choose to read, and it may be something quite obscure to other readers. The New York Times app includes just a handful of the many stories that they produce. To even consider a name of “Editor’s Choice” is not even close to the way empowered users of the web are thinking. Especially when it comes to news — it is the reader’s choice not the editor’s choice that matters.

Arthur also made it clear in his comments that the follow-on app and web access to New York Times news will require payment — there will be a cap placed on how many New York Times articles can be read before the reader has to pay. Wired Magazine ran a story the next day about the New York Times decision to convince Apple to remove the new Pulse app from the app store. Pulse, developed by two students at Stanford, is one of the best applications on the iPad. It provides a very user-friendly way to read news feeds from multiple sources in a very enjoyable way. The New York Times has concluded that having their news feeds in Pulse is a violation of their policy. This is ironic, since you would think the more readers, the more apps — including the New York Times — the more pageviews, the better, since all of their stories include paid advertising. Also, given that most Times news is available in news feeds, why would someone pay for news through a Times reader when they can get it through a free news reader? One senior Times person told me they are not sure RSS feeds are going to survive. I would say that RSS feeds going away is about as likely as email going away. If you think I am harsh take a look at what Wired had to say about this.

I wasn’t sure what to expect from Arianna Huffington as she came on stage for the closing day conversation with John Battelle. I had last seen her during a campaign speech when she was running for governor. She did not strike me at the time as very saavy about business but I was sorely mistaken about that. She has an incredibly diverse background, both politically and career-wise, and I was highly impressed with what she had to say. In fact, her view of the Huffington Post was exhilarating. She described the future of news, whereby their 130 employees, supplemented by 6,000 bloggers, are creating a new “Internet newspaper” online. The bloggers are not random. They have a  process through which the submitters are vetted and in a sense compete to be a HuffPo news provider. Arianna claims the company to be profitable, and I have no doubt that it is, as advertisers are seeking to connect with readers in a rejuvenated way. Her vision of employing and leveraging the social networks was right on as far as I am concerned, and I believe that we will soon see that the Huffington Post exceeds the readership of all the major online news media, perhaps including the New York Times. At 28 million estimated unique monthly visitors, it already exceeds Fox News, Reuters, the LA Times, ABC News, and USA Today.

Based on what the two leaders of these news organizations had to say, my conclusion is that the New York Times will be offering the news model of the past, and the Huffington Post will be offering the news of the future.

Other conference related stories on patrickWeb

Tags: advertising, Arianna, Arianna Huffington, blog, brand, conference, digital media, Huffington Post, HuffPo, IBM, marketing, New York Times, NY Times, nytimes.com, rss, rss reader, social networks, sulzburger