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Magazines and Newspapers Need to Build Better Apps

Viewpoint: Significant Glitches Trouble Too Many Publishers' Apps

Though it is still early in the migration process, Apple's iPad and other tablets appear to be a very good thing for the publishing industry, allowing publishers to monetize their content while avoiding the printing and distribution costs associated with traditional print vehicles. And they've proved to be very good for consumers, offering improved convenience and portability, not to mention the ability to read in the dark.

The best app editions provide expanded service to their readers, making it easy to share articles through email or social media, find or buy products that are featured or advertised, and compensate for disabilities with larger font sizes and audio.

But there is a large problem that threatens to limit publishers' opportunity. Of the 5,000 magazine and newspaper iPad apps we've evaluated for McPheters & Co.'s iMonitor service since April 2010, far too many simply do not work well.

In the summer of 2010, about 45% of the apps we evaluated revealed significant malfunctions. That proportion is falling, but not quickly enough: Our analysis shows that about a third of all apps we have evaluated still have at least one serious shortcoming.

The biggest issue revolves around authenticating print subscribers. Authentication errors, in which the app fails to recognize existing subscribers, are reported for almost half of the publications that offer digital versions free to print subscribers.

But there are a host of other issues. Pages, video and audio can fail to load. Links may be broken. Audio sometimes won't turn off, leaving users the choice of closing the app or continuing to listen against their will. Spontaneous crashes are common. Downloads continue to be a problem with many apps, particularly when consumers want to download issues over a 3G network or without high-speed connections.

According to Mike Haney, chief product officer for Mag+, the responsibility for malfunctions can reside with the publisher, the development platform, or even the device if memory is constrained by too many apps running simultaneously. In the case of authentication issues, publishers' subscription fulfillment houses can also be to blame.

From MIN:

Texterity and Wonderfactory Offer Mag Apps for Everyone Else
Thursday, December 2, 2010
Steve Smith

As any of the major magazine publishers who have built their own iPad magazine apps from scratch will admit, this is not a cheap, quick and easy process. Hearst may be able to open an App Lab and Condé Nast may have the pockets to create two different magazine app engines, but what about the rest of the print world? “We think there are maybe 25 to 50 magazines that will end up with custom applications,” says Martin Hensel, founder and president of Texterity, which has already helped many consumer and b2b titles move their digital magazines onto iPads. “We think everyone else will want a more cost effective solution that doesn’t require a license, hiring new people and up front charges. Serving “everyone else” is the thinking behind a new partnership between Texterity and The Wonderfactory, which has helped build custom iPad apps for both Sports Illustrated and Time magazines. Early next year the two companies will roll out a cross-platform publishing platform that allows magazines to craft tablet and smart phone apps from existing digital content but use some of the whiz-bang effects found in many custom builds.

The Wonderfactory has created a master interface design that will work across iPad, iPhone, Android smart phone and Android tablets. “The interfaces will vary somewhat by platform and screen size, but there will be a family similarity among the four,” Hensel tells minonline. On top of that interface Wonder Factory has devised a series of modules that a publisher can apply for specific app effects such as 360-degree views of scenes or objects, embedded slide shows, Twitter feeds, social sharing, audio overlays, etc. All of these tools will be constructed in HTML5 and be applicable across the app platforms.

Hensel says that the deal between Texterity and Wonderfactory plays to both of their strengths and recognizes the natural limits of a technology company when it comes to design. “We learned a lot from our usability studies and watched others issue apps, and we came to respect that the app experience is so intimate that the user interface is critical. So early on, we went to Wonderfactory.”

Texterity is adding a new interface to its own digital publishing platform and the current dashboard environment, and issue editor customers now use will be extended to enable Web tools. Hensel says that Texterity will handle the app uploads to the respective marketplaces and so is asking for a 12 month commitment from clients who want to buy into the program. But the aim of the offering is to contain app development costs and yet produce magazine apps that are more creative than some of the enhanced PDFs that often pose as apps today. The per-issue cost will be $1500 plus separate fees for modules, which can range between $200 and $500 based on their sophistication.

Hensel says that the iPad development platform should be available first in January, with the Android smart phone support in March, iPhone in April and Android tablet by the end of June.

The app development tools field is going to be some of the most hotly contested terrain in publishing in coming years. Developing sophisticated apps on a single mobile platform is hard and costly enough, but having to support multiple platforms and screen sizes is tortuous and often cost prohibitive. On paper, the deal seems smart, in that Texterity already has a credible iPad development engine and Wonderfactory made a splash with its Sports Illustrated partnership. No doubt publishers outside of the very top tier will be looking for solutions that not only contain cost but still take better advantage of the touch interfaces than current translations of digital magazines. But the market is no doubt going to get cluttered with competition in short order.

If you have breaking news to share please contact Steve Smith at ssmith@accessintel.com