6 reasons why the iPad will be the magazine’s saviour

8 April

By Matthew Buckland

The web has never really been a good fit for the glossies. Their luxurious, ample layouts have not really translated effectively to the web. Advances in web technology and connectivity have resulted in a more multimedia-friendly web - we’re in the broadband era, Flash is on its 10th version, and YouTube is the world’s 3rd biggest site. Yet magazines just aren’t nearly as prominent as their online newspaper counterparts. We can guess why. Maybe it’s because the web started out predominantly as a text-based platform and, like it or not, that legacy shapes today’s paradigm? Perhaps it’s because the web is mostly still a work-based medium, whereas magazines are an after-hours, leisure-time read? Perhaps it’s to do with the fact that magazines are generally monthlies or weeklies – they just don’t have the volumes of content that news sites do on what is a demanding, immediate and dynamic medium.

So enter the iPad. It could be the solution (or saviour) to a medium that has so far been somewhat of a conundrum for magazines.

Here are the six reasons why magazines should rejoice about the iPad:*

1. The iPad is a leisure device:

Magazines are leisure reads. The iPad is supposed to be our “third device”, an internet and multimedia device we use while relaxing on the couch in front of the TV after work and on weekends. This is different from our “first device”, the work computer or laptop, which is filled with reminders, distractions and associations about work. This type of leisure-time usage fits perfectly with most magazine consumption, which primarily happens out of work hours.

2. Apple app store has a successful payment model:

We know how hard it’s been for newspapers and magazines to find workable online business models. It seems that online advertising is not cutting it in a significant way. The jury is still out (for a rather long break) on whether users want to pay for content online. It’s not about the price, because those same users will spend the equivalent of a whole year’s online content subscription in a corner pub in less than a week. It’s psychological: it has to do with the laws of scarcity and abundance. Why pay when there’s the perception and/or the reality that similar content is freely accessible elsewhere online via thousands of equivalents? Enter the app store, where there’s an accepted payment model in a high-quality walled garden. People are paying for apps. People will pay for magazine apps.

3. The glossy iPad interface is a good fit with a glossy magazine:

The iPad is about the size of an A4 page, and therefore a perfect fit for magazine content and advertising. A luxurious, graphically-rich magazine layout would work well on the ample, silky smooth Apple iPad screen. We have a digital experience that not only matches, but betters, the offline experience in terms of design and usability because it’s now interactive. This has not quite been the case when we look at the magazine experience on the traditional desktop web. We’re not saying we want an identical magazine experience on the iPad, because that would just be one very big failure of imagination. Rather, we are saying we want a similar experience to the offline one that readers and advertisers are familiar and comfortable with. In fact, I predict iPad magazine apps, ironically, will in layout look and feel more similar to their print versions. Is this convergence nirvana?

4. Portability:

In many ways this is an obvious point, but one worth exploring. Much like a magazine, the iPad is highly-portable. On a portability scale, your PC desktop computer is at the one end and your paper magazine at the other. In between, you’d find your iPad, your laptop and your netbook. The iPad is more portable than most laptops as it is thinner, lighter and easier to move around. There are fewer wires and cords to worry about, and the battery life is advertised at being around 10 hours.

5. Access to an international audience:

Many topics most leisure magazines cover are universal. The glossies often cover issues such as love, sex, marriage, life and work. The savvier magazines will create both local and international iPad apps with their content in order to attract a much larger international audience, monetised via a contextual advertising network model.

6. Distribution and marketing:

Apple’s app store assists with distribution and marketing of your newly-created iPad magazine app. Your magazine is not out there in the great nowhere of the wild, world wide web, but in a tight ecosystem where the right type of readers will find it. This is the same audience that consumes books and are buying them in the Apple iBookStore – likely readers of magazines too.

The gorilla in the room, of course, is the question of just how many iPads are likely to be in use and how long is the road to saturation? In most emerging markets we’re probably looking at access by an elite audience only – at least in the beginning.

You could take the view that members of this elite are the all-important early adopters and influencers in society which could determine future consumption. It also depends on your target market. Perhaps you have a magazine with an international strategy that plays predominantly in the high-end iPad market. If this is the case, you should jump in now. But if your magazine is aimed at a broader market, perhaps you should wait a bit – or at least diversify. This means create an app related to your magazine, but with content and services that would appeal to a tech-savvy, elite market.

* For the purposes of this article I’ve limited the discussion to leisure magazines, excluding news and business magazines, of which some of the points may or may not apply.

View same article on http://memeburn.com/

Mobile West vs Mobile Rest

Mobile is the next big thing.
Have you heard that before? I have. In fact lately that is all I’ve heard from every direction and every guru or evangelist out there. And I use the words guru and evangelist very, very loosely.

Trying to figure out why everyone is saying that mobile is the next best thing.  Everyone is talking about mobile, but no one is being specific. All the big guns: TechCrunch, Mashable, ReadWriteWeb, TheNextWeb and many others have constantly been batting around mobile ideas, thoughts and concepts over the past 12 months, but none coherent, complete or steadfast. There is lots of talk, very little action, and even less knowledge floating around from the web-savvy smarts.

This is a new world. This is an emerging world and it is the emerging markets that are taking it on headfirst.[...]  Click on the headline link to read the full article on matthewbuckland.com

The end of the website

Posted: 05 Apr 2010 04:05 PM PDT

Having been involved in this industry for a very long time, I have the benefit of a long and wide perspective of the business of making the web. This sometimes narrows my thinking, and I have been accused, for example, of not recognising the importance of mobile, or the revolution that is social media. However, [...]
Click on headline link to visit matthewbuckland.com for full article

Finding a viable media business model in the digital age

By Monique Senekal, Managing Editor

Media enterprises operating in today’s Information Society, whether in developed or developing nations, are facing great uncertainties and challenges as to the specific approach they should be taking in responding to the global digital migration. Today consumers have greater choice and more control over the media they consume.

Just last week the Sol Plaatje Institute for Media Leadership at Rhodes University hosted 12 print media mid-level journalists and managers from across Africa in its first Essentials of Newspaper Management (EONM) short course for the year 2010. I saw this as the perfect opportunity to question the experienced group of print managers not only about their perceptions regarding the all-pervasive debate that the traditional media and, indeed, print media, are forced to develop a new business model to meet the needs of the digital age, the age of discontinuity, but also of the respective business strategies they are employing in responding to the global digital migration.

Quite surprisingly, most of the participants were steadfast in their belief that digital media is not really a threat to their businesses. Many explained that their management teams have had the foresight in using the internet as an extension of their product and/or service.

Shirley Govender, editor and managing director of the community newspaper and online publication Southern Globe, which services the greater Indian population in Lenasia, explains:

“As a monthly publication, we saw it as an imperative to go online because 80% of our audience work in Johannesburg, meaning that they need to commute at least two hours on a daily basis. Online we are able to update content regularly in a cost-effective manner. We therefore saw going online as an opportunity to better our service to our readers, allowing them to go online and catch up with their community news, whenever they have a few moments at work to do so.”

Govender further explains that going online has allowed them to expand their audience reach, now targeting the techno-savvy youth market. Strategically, their website caters not only for the need of the youth to network and interact, but also for the older readers’ need to gather information. Southern Globe’s online strategy also includes inviting readers to submit articles they think may be of interest to their target audience.

The EONM group of print managers are also recognising the value in real-time marketing. That is, they are using the interactive nature of the web for real-time, value-added customer relationship building. For example, Dirk Lotriet, deputy editor at Sondag, asserts that their online strategy for improving their service delivery is to offer the feedback loop, creating producer-consumer dialogue and relationship-building. Sondag has also introduced an interactive SMS section which invites readers to express their opinions and views about Sondag and the articles published in the newspaper. Furthermore, Lotriet adds that their value-added service is to offer picture archives and competitions online.

There is also the possibility for traditional print media to find new ways of generating revenue online. However, Adrian Henwood, co-owner of the Eastern Times community newspaper, Pretoria, is not convinced of the viability in investing in an online revenue generation strategy at the moment.

“There is no money going digital; our income is generated from selling ad space, not sales. Going digital is more about branding, getting our name out there,” he said.

Although Henwood is right in saying that online provides the opportunity for branding, there may be ways to generate extra revenue online for community print media. Perhaps they should think of strategies that offer their online users customised services that are uniquely differentiated from their competitors. The online product could, for example, allow consumers to obtain instant information on advertisers’ products or services to aid them in their crucial purchase decision process. The online site could also offer a ‘bid-or-buy’ section where the community could offer their unwanted goods for auction; they could also offer a point-of-transaction service to its reader and advertiser base which may increase their unique selling proposition to their existing and potential advertiser base.

Then there is the rapid expansion of mobile phones in Africa, which promises to close the digital divide between the haves and have-nots and the urban and rural populations and has made it easier for people to participate in social media networking.

With 28% of the African population having mobile access to date, the mobile phone has shown an exponential growth rate from only 2% in 2000, according to International Telecommunications Union (ITU), an agency of the United Nations. Compared to only 3% with access to the net, the mobile is, indeed, the future of web access in Africa. However, not many of the EONM participants spoke about using the mobile phone as an integral part of their strategic business strategies.

Betsie van der Merwe, co-owner and editor of the Eastern Times community newspaper, acknowledges print media’s need to take note of the opportunities offered by the mobile phone, adding:

“We must engage in mobile; it’s not a real threat to us right now but we must be aware of it."

Although many academics and journalistic critics muse that traditional journalism has fundamentally failed to serve the needs of the public – by being too elitist, selfish, product-orientated rather that consumer-driven – Lotriet counter-attacks and points out:

“Journalism might be failing the academics, but it is definitely not failing the public; our increasing readership proves that we are serving the needs of our target market.”

What emerges from this statement is the reality that the tabloidisation of today’s journalism is another thread coinciding with the digitisation of the media, whether the conservationists of traditional media like it or not. Lotriet asserts that “the success of tabloids, community newspapers and African language publications proves that they are giving people what they want”.

The fact that Sondag is structurally a tabloid newspaper may point to a parallel phenomenon occurring in the new media landscape: that the tabloidisation of the media on the one hand and an increase in user-generated content made possible by an increase in broadband on the other are two phenomena so similar in structure that they can almost be viewed as one and the same. Both assert the need for more grassroots journalism, journalism that is produced bottom-up, rather than top-down.

The question that remains is thus: how can tabloidisation and the increase in user-generated content in the digital age translate into effective and ethical management, the cornerstones of managing any successful business?

The title of this post marks the theme of this year’s African Media Leadership Conference, hosted annually by the Sol Plaatje Institute for Media Leadership and Germany’s Konrad Adenauer Stiftung. The conference, taking place 26-29 September in Cairo, Egypt, will be a key learning and reflective platform where African media’s top dogs will discuss the structural and operational challenges, and the strategies they employ in an effort to remain credible, relevant and competitive in a fast-changing, digitised, market-driven media landscape.