Digital for (Smart) Dummies

I’m not going to write a long post about how Google Drive is literally exactly like Dropbox and how I already use and love Dropbox and how I thought at least Google Drive backed up my Google Docs locally to my comp so I would have an offline backup but it doesn’t, they are just aliases.

Instead, I want to simply comment on the death of “Google Docs” as a branded product.

Google Drive is a virtual storage drive. Directly competes with Dropbox, iCloud (inevitably). Got it.

Google Docs is a suite of a productivity document authoring tools that directly competes with Office, iWork.

But by putting it under the umbrella of Google Drive, Google Docs has lost its branding identity as a great stand-alone product. Just seems like half-baked marketing.

There are no words to describe this pairing of two of my all time favorite things. 

This is no mere I.P.O. It feels like a cultural event, a pinnacle in the history of tech, a moment.

Facebook continues operating at nearly full capacity during an update. A typical Facebook deployment doesn’t require scheduled downtime or cause any other disruption to the website. Rossi said that the no-downtime update is an important requirement of the Facebook release strategy. He also views it as a hallmark of quality Web software engineering.

There has been much sparring this week as comments and responses have come pouring in about this post by Jason Pontin at Technology Review.

I wrote a brief response when I first read it, and I have a lot of thoughts on these matters, many of which were so well-articulated in this post by Mike Hanley that they do not need to be re-written here. 

While the debate is healthy, sensationalist headlines about publishers (plural) disliking apps, based on ONE company, and ONE person’s experience, is not fair or right to all of the others who are making it work, but are perhaps less rambunctious about their successes. Jason’s frustration comes across loud and clear though, and I truly do feel for him and other publishers who feel scorned by their iPad app experience.

I am not going to pick a side re: Apps vs. HTML5 in the longterm. Anyone who claims to know the future of mobile and tablet publishing and consumption norms is just speculating. Every publisher should be thinking about betting on every possible horse they can. 

We do have some historical data from these early years of content on mobile and tablet devices, and if you look at consumer habits (which you should), there is a lot in support of apps.

81.5% of time spent with smartphones is with apps, 18.5% on the mobile web [source]. There are 250+ million iTunes users with credit cards on file that can easily make App Store and in-app purchases (as opposed to entering their credit cards into a mobile site). App content can be read offline. Apps just “feel” better as they are quite literally native to the device. And the list goes on… That is why MAZ has chosen to work exclusively with apps for the time being. 

But Apps vs. HMTL5 ultimately is the wrong debate to be having. Technology Review is making a serious mistake in their assessment because they are ignoring the real wrench that has been thrown at them (clue: it’s not apps).

Mobile and tablet devices themselves are the real disrupters, not apps. The experience of using these devices is so radically different than using a computer, perhaps as radically different as the computer was 20 years ago when compared with print.

Publishers’ worlds got turned upside down with the birth of the desktop web, and they have only recently gotten their website acts together, if at all.

Now once again, a huge change is rocking their boat. And longterm, it’s true that you won’t be able to just throw your print edition up on the iPad untouched, but you also can’t just throw up a new version of your website.

Tablet and mobile consumption is so so different than computer consumption. Flipboard’s CEO, Mike McCue, spoke recently about the beauty “revolution” of the iPad. All hail! The dark ages of web design are finally over! Viva la revolution!

For the beauty of the iPad, print is actually a much closer analogy than a website is. 

In the end, we need to be aiming to perfect the tablet consumption and production experience. It’s not print, and it’s not the web. It’s somewhere in the middle. I personally call it “digital print”. No one has it quite right yet, but how could they? The device itself has only existed for 2 years. 

All that being said, there is very much a place, now, in 2012, for tablet versions of print, AND tablet versions of websites. You have to start somewhere. There must be an entry point for publishers into this new market. You can’t just skip to the end. (and if you wait until then to start, you’ll be way too late)

Magazine publishers now have two products to worry about with tablets: their print edition and their website. How do you do it all?

TR writes about moving to a purely RSS-like model. I think that makes sense for a web team that is used to outputting to a website— used to templates, a CMS, and sacrificing branding to other RSS readers. The expectations of website consumers is met also: they can read what they want and/or read it through a nice RSS reader like Flipboard.

However for a team used to outputting to print, they need a solution that builds on their existing workflow, which is very different than a web team’s. These are editors and designers who greatly value the curation, presentation, and branding integrity of their content. And in turn, their readers have come to expect that experience. 

Newspapers have it the hardest. Their content is consumed more like a website’s, but they are used to print workflows. Tough spot to be in. 

Over time, these various sorts of publishers may all converge to a single mobile/tablet type of content provider. I believe there will in fact be a convergence at some point. It won’t be web, and it won’t be print— it will be something new. 

But you still need to start somewhere, and you need to start now. Don’t go bet the farm, just start. Get in the game. Choose a way that is frictionless and cost-effective, leaving room to grow as the market grows. 

Readership will only get more fragmented over time, not less. Think of apps and HTML5 “web apps” as two different platforms, just like iOS and Android are different platforms. That’s how the app/HTML5 conversation should be framed.

What you should be concentrating on instead is mastering the experience of tablet and mobile devices, and working with tools that allow you to explore and experiment.

Really well written and thoughtful response. I agree 100% about custom costs being impossible to regain ROI on, and about how apps are not magically successful— traditional marketing and promotion still applies in the app world!

On the tech side, platforms rule the game here— the legwork is already done, allowing publishers to do what they do best: content.

New York-based digital magazine store Magzter Inc. has secured series A funding from IndoUS Venture Partners. Although the exact amount has not been disclosed, it is an estimated $3-5 million, according to co-founder and president Vijayakumar Radhakrishnan.

Newsstands are a tricky and crowded side of the digital publishing biz. In other news, awesome news for Indian startups!!

Check it out here

I like this idea of mixing and matching content from different sources, in a curated way, but this execution is SO BAD:

1. Zinio’s reading experience just sucks. Period.

2. Not available in the Zinio iPad app. (really?)

3. To read any of the articles you have to buy the entire issue of that magazine. No one is going to buy 10 different magazines just to read 10 articles about the Titanic. (Titanic is one of the collections) If Zinio had an all-you-can-eat model this might be compelling.

4. Only works in Flash. (really?)

Sigh.

And they are right.