Content Matters

Four Ways Twitter Can Improve "Who to Follow"

Last week, Twitter launched its new “who to follow” feature, a valuable tool in identifying those with similar interests to you. Who to follow works on the basis that if multiple people whom you already follow are following someone, they might be of interest to you as well.

Besides its grammatically incorrect form (I guess “whom to follow” doesn’t roll off the tongue as easily), “who to follow” could use some basic improvements.

Here are some suggestions on how to improve Who to Follow:

• Exclude the” Twitterati”; if my profile suggests an interest in social media I probably already know @scobleizer @guykawasaki and @pierre. If I’m not following them at this point, it’s because I’ve chosen not to do so. I would suggest excluding any user that has more than 20k followers. At minimum, give me a way to filter them out of the list.

• Don’t ask me to follow a user who has never tweeted. Earlier this week, I saw a tweet from @bandhphoto that Twitter had suggested he follow @canon. Makes sense, as B&H is among the largest sellers of Canon photographic equipment. But then he noted that @canon, while having 3,278 followers, currently follows no one and has zero tweets.

            

• You have tons of data, Twitter (though I'm not sure what you’re archiving). Please mine it more effectively. A few ideas:

• If I've previously unfollowed someone, there's no need to show them to me.
• If someone's on a list I've created, I must know of their existence, so there's no need to suggest I follow them (that's what I currently do with the Twitterati mentioned above)

• Please display the basic metrics for each person - # followers, #following, # of tweets (or better yet, # of tweets per day)

There are also some more advanced features that would be very useful. For example, applying Who to Follow to a list would be a very useful way for me to add more people to each of my lists. Or, let me identify a group of my users and have it calculate new “Who to Follow” suggestions based on those users. There are some third party apps that do similar things – Twiangulate, for example; Twitter could add these types of features or more tightly integrate with Twiangulate and others to handle them.

Of course, Twitter needs to balance its efforts between the early adopter power users and those just coming to the app today. While Geoffrey Moore might argue it's time to ignore the power users and focus on the mainstream, the early adopters are still driving much of Twitter's adoption and these added features should keep those users in mind.

 

Who Should Buy Barnes & Noble?

Barnes & Noble (BKS) is being put on the block due to its depressed stock price. Current market value is barely $750 million, making it a reasonably inexpensive purchase.

The two most obvious suitors are founder Len Riggio and investor Ron Burkle, who currently owns about 19% of the company. But beyond those two, who might bid for the company?

Some have suggested Amazon (AMZN), but I don’t see that happening. First, that deal would be unlikely to pass antitrust scrutiny. More importantly, the deal wouldn’t make a lot of sense for Amazon. In Barnes & Noble, they have a weakened competitor on both the traditional book and eBook market. The Amazon model is working and there’s no reason to burden it with the negatives of running a brick & mortar business.

I’m sure that private equity firms will be in the mix (they always are) but won’t speculate on which ones might bid. Suffice to say that there will be other financial bidders here.

Barnes & Noble might also gain attention from other traditional brick & mortar retailers. It could be an interesting purchase for Target (TGT) or Wal-Mart (WMT), but neither is very acquisitive and I’m not sure that it would fit either company’s business model nor culture.

I think Barnes & Noble might have the most appeal to companies in the education market, perhaps someone like Blackboard, Inc. (BBBB). B&N already operates numerous college bookstores and its textbook division remains a strength. More importantly, the Nook seems well positioned to become the delivery platform of choice for education. B&N and Blackboard recently signed a partnership for eTextbooks. Financially, a deal wouldn’t be that easy. Blackboard’s market cap is just $1.3 billion, so they would need help in financing a deal. But a combination of the two companies could establish the dominant player in the educational e-reader space. The Nook would have incredible branding (every time a student logs on to their Blackboard service) and would have both online and offline distribution.

What Sidney Harman should do with Newsweek

It’s possible that 91-year old Sidney Harman acquired Newsweek simply as a means of minimizing estate taxes for his family. But assuming he truly wants to turn Newsweek into a viable product in the coming years, what might he do?

Here are three steps he might take to make Newsweek viable.

Leverage the brand

This won’t be easy. Newsweek has very strong brand recognition, but that brand name is an anachronism in the age of real-time news.Perhaps the best thing he can do here is come up with a clever tagline. Maybe something like:

There are 604,800 seconds in every week. Newsweek covers each and every one of them.

Kill the print edition

This one is the most obvious, but will also be very difficult for many inside Newsweek to embrace.
But there is no better way to change the mindset of a newsweekly than to eliminate the weekly editorial and print schedule.

It may seem harsh to kill the print version and the many jobs that will go with it, but if he wants to save the brand, he will need to move swiftly in that direction.

Reconstitute themselves as the curator of choice for politics & policy

Rather than trying to author content on a vast number of topics, what if they instead set out to become the curator of choice for political and policy content? Don't try to comment on the news - instead, provide insights on key policy issues, both domestic and international.

Retain a few key editors, each of whom will be expected to write 1-2 blog posts each day. Then, using a combination of technology and lower-cost curators, sift through content from other media and blog sites, identifying relevant content and classifying it by topic. The end result will be a series of high quality pages on compelling topics, led by a modest amount of proprietary blog content surrounded by carefully curated web content. Some topics may be evergreen, while others may be cyclical (elections) or event-driven (e.g. WikiLeaks). The content should be multimedia in nature and should aim to provoke and promote discussion.

I would trash the existing Newsweek.com site and come up with a dual strategy for website and mobile.  They should take a look at what Flipboard and Pulse have done on the iPad for inspiration. Everything should be based on easily browsing and sharing content.

That’s what I would do with Newsweek. What would you do?

 

Call for Mobile Content Innovators

WSA-Mobile (the World Summit Award - Mobile Content) is seeking entries for their 2010 contest.

Nominations are submitted via each country's national expert. The national expert for the USA this year is Michele Manafy, editor-in-chief of eContent Magazine.

Below is a brief overview of WSA-Mobile

WSA-mobile emphasizes cultural diversity and identity, the creation of varied information content and the digitalization of educational, scientific and cultural heritage. It aims to make the benefits of the new Information Society accessible and meaningful for all humanity, and in particular, to raise public awareness and give deserved public recognition to the highest quality e-Content, produced all over the world. As of today, around 160 countries actively participate in the initiative.

If you're interested in applying, take a look at the WSA-Mobile content categories and evaluation criteria, then head over to the nomination wiki to enter your submission.

WSA-Mobile awards offer great prestige. If you've had strong accomplishments in the mobile content space, this is a great way to show your stuff.

Amazon e-Books Outselling Hardcovers: What is the Impact?

Twitter was abuzz yesterday with links to this New York Times article quoting Amazon as saying that eBooks in the Kindle format are now outselling hardcovers.

So, what does that really mean and what does it tell us?

First, the details behind the headline (since Nick Carr suggests we rarely bother to click through). According to Amazon, for the past three months, eBooks have outsold hardcover books by a ratio of more than 1.4-to-1.  In other words, for every 100 hardcovers sold, they sold 143 eBooks. And that ratio has increased to 1.8 to 1 over the past four weeks.

That’s pretty impressive, considering the Kindle store has been open less than three years. There are fewer than 5 million Kindle-compatible readers (excluding phones) out there today, a small fraction of the book-reading audience.

Amazon has been extremely successful at managing a multi-channel device strategy. While pushing its own reader, the uptick since the iPad launch makes it clear that a lot of those eBooks are being read on the iPad. In the Times story, Amazon suggests that the iPad is a different device and is not competitive to the Kindle. While that may be true to some extent, it's naive to suggest that it won't have any impact. As an iPad user, I can't see myself buying a Kindle device. That said, I still use both Apple and Amazon libraries. While I prefer the iBooks app to the Kindle on the iPad, the Kindle has a much larger library of titles, so what I can’t get in iBooks format, I will buy in Kindle form.

It also shows that price wars have helped shift e-readers from novelty gadgets to mainstream products, suitable for young and old. Just 12 months ago, I’d perhaps see 1 Kindle user during my daily commute; today, there are likely to be 5-6 commuters using Kindles, iPads or Nooks in a single car on my train.  The Kindle price has dropped to $189 while the Barnes & Noble Nook is priced at $149. As they approach the magical $99 price point, they’ll become an impulse purchase and adoption will continue to grow.

The audience for eReaders is surprisingly diverse. While the typical technology early adopter is a 30-45 year-old male, eReader users seem equally distributed by gender and run all ages. 40+ readers have found the adjustable font size makes life easier, while teens and tweens are adopting them as well. The student market is likely to explode in the next 12-24 months. Barnes & Noble recently inked a deal with Blackboard to pursue the high school textbook market. I’ll be shocked if by the time my 11-year-old enters college she uses any printed textbooks.

What’s the likely impact?

The rapid adoption of eReaders will no doubt have a huge impact on the publishing industry.

First, the good news. Users of eReaders tend to read a lot more than others.  It’s no surprise that when you can carry as many books as you’d like in one device, you’ll buy more than if you had to carry each individually. So, despite lower prices, revenue and profits should see a noticeable bump.

It will be interesting to see, over time, how the reading patterns of users on dedicated readers, such as the Kindle or Nook, compare to those on multi-function devices like the iPad. While I have a couple of books in progress on my iPad, I’m more likely to read RSS feeds, use a news app or read Twitter much of the time.

At the same time, eReaders should quickly bring some level of disintermediation to an industry where publishers and distributors have incredible power. For bestselling titles, those blockbusters with 7-figure advances for name-brand authors, publishers will still hold court. But for long-tail titles, which never received much marketing support from their publishers, there is likely to be great change. I’d expect a new market to emerge, where PR and marketing professionals help self-published authors drive awareness of their titles.

On the channel side, it seems likely that the Big 3 will dominate. Amazon, Apple and Google (with their soon to be launched Google Editions, a store which will drive users to multiple channels for purchase) are likely to vie for dominance in the eReader market.

Barnes & Noble looks like it can be at least a niche player and can leverage its existing relationships to potentially dominate the educational market. 

That leaves question marks for companies like Borders and Wal-Mart. Borders has been on shaky ground for quite a while and despite launching its own eReader software, seems more likely to follow the Blockbuster video path than to find success. Wal-Mart has established itself as a dominant bookseller and has reach into many households which Amazon and Apple don’t reach today. Yet it’s hard to see what their value proposition will be in a segment where pricing is generally set by the publisher.

Similar challenges will be felt by independent booksellers, already an endangered group. Traditionally, these businesses thrived by their personal, hands-on touch. A market where awareness will be a huge challenge suggests a potential role for the independents, perhaps as affiliates to Amazon or Google, yet even that model suggests that a physical presence no longer serves a purpose.

Many have argued that the endearing qualities of physical books would make many hesitate to give them up. I have fond memories of wandering the “miles of aisles” at the Strand Bookstore. Yet, just as with digital music, it’s apparent that convenience and improved functionality can easily trump sentiment. Of course I still haven’t figured out how to get an author to personalize and sign a copy of an eBook.

What a Long, Strange Marketing Trip It’s Been

It’s no surprise that a key to innovation is rejecting conventional wisdom. And innovation thrives in many businesses, particularly those in the technology space. But whether in silicon valley or silicon alley, marketing is still largely done in the same way it has for decades. Companies hire PR firms who push out press releases, while marketers post product info to web sites and create factsheets for their sales staff.

Marketers may dabble with new approaches, sticking a toe into the social media space by creating a Facebook fan page or setting up an official Twitter account, but even then most apply old approaches to new platforms. Knowledge is shared through boring white papers which sit behind a registration wall while Twitter accounts push out links to bland press releases or staid marketing messages.

 When it comes to breaking the rules of marketing and rejecting conventional wisdom, David Meerman Scott (literally) has written the book. And now, he’s joined together with HubSpot CEO Brian Halligan to author a new book, Marketing Lessons from the Grateful Dead.

It’s not the first time that David has written about the Grateful Dead. Readers of his book World Wide Rave may recall a discussion framed by asking whether you wanted to be like Led Zeppelin, whose historic reunion show at the O2 arena was not made available in video format (and where YouTube was forced to remove clips posted by fans), or like the Grateful Dead who, long before the days of Facebook and social media, encouraged concert attendees to record their shows, even setting up special sections where they could plug in to the soundboard to get better quality recordings.

As the book pointed out:

If you want to remain relevant in an always-on, fan-centric, YouTube world, you need to embrace—not restrict—your most important supporters. You need to believe in the power of a World Wide Rave to sell your products and services.

In this new book, David and Brian take a look back at how the Dead worked to develop and nurture an active community of fans, then show how to apply many of those same techniques to today’s marketing platforms. For example:

Rethink traditional industry assumptions – Rather than focus on record albums as a primary revenue source (with touring to support album sales), the Dead created a business model focused on touring.

 (blogger note: if you’ve read what Fred Wilson and others have written suggesting media companies look to monetize the audience, not the content, this is a great example)

Bypass accepted channels and go direct – The Grateful Dead created a mailing list in the early 1970s where they announced tours to fans first. Later,they established their own ticketing office, providing the most loyal fans with the best seats in the house.

The foreword to the book is written by one of the biggest (literally and figuratively) Deadheads, former UCLA and NBA great Bill Walton. As he so eloquently describes it:

Their passion, creative spirit, imaginative soul, and industrious commitment to promote truth, fairness, justice, and the Grateful Dead way led them through the evolutionary transition where they went from playing for silver to playing for life. This book tells you how to make that transition for your own career.

David Scott’s books are always practical, insightful and a fun read. Fans of his prior books won’t be disappointed here. Marketing Lessons from the Grateful Dead may be his finest book to-date.

 

Why Most Pay Walls Will Fail (and a potential solution)

Walls. They're going up everywhere, or so it seems.
Times Online put up its pay wall last week, and now Time has put up a wall (just a wall, not a pay wall since you can't buy the content through the site), with many other publishers poised to follow. At the same time, numerous publishers see the iPad as their savior, giving them the opportunity for a mulligan, somehow erasing all of the web experiences of the past ten years.

I'm all for publishers experimenting with business models, in fact we've had too little experimentation in recent years. But I'm also pretty convinced that most of these pay walls will fail.

Let's start with Time.
The Time business model has some deep flaws. First of all, it's a newsweekly in a world where news breaks in real-time. And while it does employ some quality journalists, it is not easily differentiated from other news media, either online or in print. Other than perhaps the Person of the Year issue, when was the last time you sought out Time either online or off?

In its latest effort to boost subscription revenue, Time removed the full text of all its articles, providing only short snippets with no way to purchase the full article. Users have three choices:
1. Buy it in print
2. Buy it for iPad
3. Ignore it and find another source.

Most of us will likely choose option 3. There are far too many substitutes out there to pay a premium for the iPad edition or to buy the printed copy. If course there may be special editions which drive interest, spiking newsstand sales or iPad downloads.

Time's sibling, Sports Illustrated is taking a similar approach and I have little doubt that the swimsuit issue will set records for iPad magazine downloads. But SI has already given up on selling advertising directly and today announced a deal to have sister company Turner take over responsibility for SI.com. And Time may find it's overplayed its hand. Will many purchase the Person of the Year issue? Some will, but for most, simply finding out who is named Person if the Year is enough. Once that curiosity is satisfied, users may be unwilling to pay for the detail available through a subscription.

And that's the biggest challenge with these paywalls. Unless your content is unique and compelling, it will be impossible to build a substantial paid audience. Large brands, once they lose their audience, run the risk of becoming irrelevant.

Many have suggested that as most news sites move their content behind the paywall, users will have no choice but to subscribe. I question that logic. Even if you could move all the newspapers behind the paywall today (and do so without raising antitrust/collusion issues), new competitors will spring up. And, let’s face it, there’s no way you’ll get all the news products in a market to act in the same way. While Times Online has put up its pay wall, the Guardian has continued to push content to the open web. A key problem for the news industry is the glut of sources; as some of those sources remove their content from the open web, others will see that as a huge opportunity to gain traffic.

The web has clearly devalued the general interest, broadly read publications. This is most pronounced with the news weeklies, but even entertainment-oriented magazines will struggle. In order to remain relevant, magazines like People will have to provide more exclusive content, which will likely drive up their cost structure. For the general gossip info, such as the travails of Lindsay Lohan, users will go to TMZ or another free site. Ironically, it’s the niche products that will likely do well with paywalls, as there are few free substitutes. Enthusiast magazines, which often got the bulk of their revenue from newsstand sales, will have more flexibility in using paywalls or removing their content from the free web, while mainstream products will suffer.

What’s the solution?
As Forrester’s Nick Thomas recently wrote in his Publishers Need Popcorn Not Paywalls post (using a line originated by Union Square Ventures’ Fred Wilson) publishers must look to monetize the audience not the content. It’s something that publishers have not been very good at but that eCommerce and other digital businesses have mastered. Content providers will have to come up with the right mix of brand advertising, eCommerce, lead generation and other tools in order to become profitable.

I also think we may start to see some interesting acquisitions as eCommerce and other businesses may begin to acquire traditional publishers. An example came earlier today when FriendFinder Networks, an adult social media site, announced its intent to bid for Playboy Enterprises. FriendFinder, which previously acquired Penthouse magazine, clearly sees an opportunity to monetize these brands beyond simple content subscriptions. And while adult content may have its own unique characteristics, I could see other, more mainstream companies acquiring magazines with strong brands. How about a few of these potential deals:

• Guitar Center could acquire Guitar Player Magazine
• Dick’s Sporting Goods could acquire Ski Magazine
• Travelocity could acquire Travel + Leisure

If publishers can’t find alternative means to monetize their audience, then I expect to see more and more creative deals where companies with a proven ability to monetize their traffic acquire the content that drives it.

To go mainstream, Foursquare needs to become more like Groupon

Foursquare has done a good job of attracting the early adopters – hypersocial mobile data users. If you’re young, single and living in an urban area (or a college town), the value proposition is huge.

The next stage of adoption (and monetization) is likely to be a tougher hurdle. There are two obvious directions for Foursquare expansion:  digital-savvy business users and shoppers.

While shoppers are the larger (and more attractive) demographic, let’s start with the digital-savvy business users. By this, I’m referring to those who are probably active on Twitter, but are beyond their bar-hopping days. These users (and I fall into this category), get the value of social media, yet struggle to find real value in Foursquare.  I know that I use Foursquare much more heavily when I travel than when I am in the office. Check-ins at clients are typically not appropriate and a daily check-in at Starbucks and the office just isn’t that exciting.

The more attractive market is the local shopping market; I’m using shopping in the broad sense – in addition to goods, it could be food, drink and other services. This is also the place where Foursquare expects to generate its revenues – through promotional marketing offers. Yet, so far, the promotional offers have been somewhat lame.

The dominant offer, at least for those in major cities, comes from Starbucks.  I’ve got five Starbucks within a stone’s throw of my office, so any check-ins in this area will likely yield the yellow “special nearby” sign with an offer from Starbucks. Yet that offer is sort of pathetic: Become Mayor of Starbucks and get $1 off on a drink. But that’s a pretty limited deal.  It took @michaelwolf 76 visits to become Mayor of his local Starbucks.  

Last week, when I was in London, it only took me about a half-dozen check-ins at the Starbucks on Old Broad to become Mayor, but that wouldn’t happen in New York or San Francisco. And what you often find is that the Mayor of a given Starbucks happens to be one of the baristas.

Checking in over and over in hopes that you, like Michael Wolf, may get $1 off on a frappucino, after dropping $200 just isn’t likely to get the mainstream user to adopt Foursquare.

 

Compare those offers to what you see on Groupon. The typical Groupon offer is 50% off or more. Recent deals I’ve received were for 67% off from Wine Insiders, 50% off skating at Chelsea Piers and 53% off at the NY Hall of Science. Those offers are why Groupon is experiencing huge growth. A chance to be the one person that day who qualifies for a buck off a frappucino just won’t motivate users.

Perhaps enabling rewards for multiple check-ins (e.g. everyone who checks in 5 times this week gets a half-priced coffee) would probably get many more people interested. There are complications, of course (you don’t have to actually buy anything or even step foot inside a Starbucks to check-in), but those are things that Foursquare and its marketing partners will have to figure out.

There are many potential innovative offers that can leverage location-based services. Content providers could provide access to premium content to users checking in at a conference; wine brands could offer special deals on wine pairings at a restaurant. I can think of dozens of compelling offers that would make users  more likely to check-in.

 

I think it’s inevitable that checking-in with location-based services will become mainstream in a few years. But if Foursquare wants to be the leader in this space, it needs to provide greater value to mainstream users.

Three Obvious Features That Twitter Should Add NOW

It’s good to see that Twitter is has introduced the new “You Both Follow” feature, which lets you look at a Twitter user and see whom you follow in common. My first reaction was “what took so long?” After all, one of the key inputs to any social system (online or off) is identifying who you have in common with other participants.  Similar features have been available in other social networks like Facebook and LinkedIn for quite a while.

Since You Both Follow has only been rolled out to 10% of the user base, here's a screen shot of it (courtesy Mashable):

While they’re at it, here are a few similarly obvious features that Twitter should add right away:

You’re Both Followed By: this is the flipside of You Both Follow. Who are the people who follow both you and the Twitter user you’re viewing. This is probably just as important as You Both Follow; when assessing the credibility of another user, seeing that they are followed by people you respect makes you more likely to follow them as well.

Are they following me? Today, when I look at a user on Twitter, I can easily see whether I am already following the user. But, there’s no indication of whether they are following me. How many times have you tried to DM someone, only to see that they are not following you? A simple indicator “@graubart is following you” would make life a lot easier.

The ability to mine the social graph is a huge opportunity and there's no reason Twitter shouldn't expose these simple queries.  Yes, there are ways to get at this info through third party sites, but it should be bundled right into the product.

And, while they're at it, the third feature Twitter should add is the temporary mute feature. When users are at a conference and are hyper-tweeting, or even getting a bit overenthusiastic during a sporting event (sorry to those not interested in the #StanleyCup), there should be a way to mute them. There are a few 3rd party tools that do this such as TweepSnooze or my favorite, Muuter (which supports user and/or keyword muting), but this should be part of the basic Twitter toolkit.

In addition to making these enhancements through the Twitter UI, these features should also be accessible through their API so that third party clients like TweetDeck and Seesmic can implement them as well.

iPad Content Sales: Impressive Start but Likely Unsustainable

The numbers are starting to come in and the early results for sales and downloads of content on the iPad are in many cases, impressive.

• The highly touted Wired issue ($4.99) was downloaded 24,000 times in its first day and 62,000 to-date, grossing over $300k (netting $216k to Conde Nast).
• Rupert Murdoch announced that the Times of London had sold 5,000 subscriptions at £9.99 per month.
• The WSJ has reported 10,000 iPad customers, but hasn’t broken those out as to new subs vs. iPad access to those with existing wsjonline subscriptions.
• The FT app has been downloaded by a reported 130,000 users.

Those who’ve suggested that the iPad will usher in a new model for content – a do-over for news services, see this as proof of their theory. Unfortunately, I think it’s more driven by the “I’ve got a shiny new toy; what else can I do with it” model.

It’s great that 62,000 users downloaded the Wired app. A lot of that can be attributed to all the hype that came with its release. Yet how compelling was the Wired app experience? I played with it a bit and came away underwhelmed. The reading experience was OK, but nothing really different from what I could get on the web. Most of the innovation, it seems, was aimed at the advertisers, providing interactive ways to play with an ad. OK, that’s pretty cool for a demo, but do I really want to pay $4.99 to play with a bunch of ads? Perhaps the greatest condemnation comes from the InterfaceLab blog:

What strikes me most about the Wired app is how amazingly similar it is to a multimedia CD-ROM from the 1990’s

I think Wired will be lucky to see 10% of those users (6,000) come back to buy the second monthly edition. A more realistic guess will be about 3,000 users, hardly enough to drive circulation revenue OR get their advertisers excited.

The Times of London subscribers may have a bit more depth to them, but I think they too will soon dissipate, especially since News Corp has decided to make this a separate subscription than either print or online. They will likely retain some users who drop print, but with so many news alternatives it will be a tough road for them. I expect we’ll see the numbers continue to grow in the next few months (especially since the iPad has only been on sale in the UK for a short time), and reaching 20-25k iPad users by year-end might be a realistic goal. Yet while cannibalizing their print subscribers may be a good tactic in some ways, it may also foster a set of users who learn that they can do without the product altogether.

Some of the other results are harder to interpret. WSJ figures don’t isolate new paid subscribers, so judging quality is impossible.

Similarly hard-to-judge is the FT, which is providing two months’ free service. My guess is that the conversion rate will be modest. Many of those users, of course, already have FT.com licences, so they will continue to use the iPad at no extra charge. For others, I’d expect a conversion rate in the 5% range.

That’s not to say that there are no success stories. The Times of London and FT may turn out to be a strong success, and I expect that the WSJ will do well on the iPad over time. I think that magazines will fare far worse. While newspaper usage will grow over time, I’ll be shocked if any future issues of Wired exceed the water mark set by the premier copy. An impulse purchase of a magazine for $5 at an airport newsstand or when heading to the beach makes sense. An impulse magazine purchase on the iPad, where you have the entire web at your fingertips, seems unlikely.

When I first got my iPhone, I downloaded many new apps, many free, some paid. Over time, I got developed a routine and today have around 90 apps on the phone, but only a dozen or so are in steady use (TweetDeck, NewsRack, NYT, Bloomberg, Facebook, FourSquare, Pandora, Sportacular, TripIt, a few guitar apps and some games that my daughter plays regularly). The majority of the initial 10-20 apps I downloaded have been relegated to the trash bin. 

The same will occur for new iPad users. And with a good screen and browser, many iPad users will find that visiting the content provider’s website using Safari provides as good or better experience, which is not the case on the iPhone.

In the months to come we will see new and creative approaches to the iPad and other tablet devices. Publishers would be well-served in trying to find ways to create a compelling user experience that provides ongoing value, not simply a one-time gimmick.