Content Matters

With Office for iPad, Microsoft Aims to Drive Its Cloud Services

The long-awaited Office for iPad was launched today.

Office for iPad is clearly aimed at driving users to adopt Microsoft’s cloud-based tools. It’s fine as a document reader, but to edit or create documents requires a $99.99 per year Office 365 subscription.

To access cloud-based documents, which is the primary way you'll work with documents, they have to reside on Microsoft OneDrive (the relabeled SkyDrive service). There’s no option to access your docs on Dropbox, Google Drive or any other third party platforms. You can get a free OneDrive account with 7 GB of storage, but for those who actively use Dropbox or another service, the idea of adding another cloud host for documents doesn’t make much sense. That leaves an opening for tools like QuickOffice Pro, acquired by Google, which integrates with both gmail and Dropbox.

The applications themselves seem robust. They didn't just take the desktop apps and shrink them; clearly a lot of effort went into building device-appropriate apps. I'll leave full reviews on these to others, but my quick thoughts are that the apps themselves are solid.

If you're an active MS Office user who doesn't use Google Docs or Dropbox, Office 365 and OneDrive would make a lot of sense. But, for the gmail/dropbox/google docs crowd, I don't expect much takeup. For me, the biggest benefit might be to use the PowerPoint viewer as a way to more easily run PowerPoint decks from my iPad to a projector. I typically use Keynote for that, but they're not 100% compatible, so a solid PowerPoint viewer will be great for that occasional need.

The big winner here is Apple. Microsoft has resisted developing iPad-specific versions of Office applications because they still held out hope that those applications could ultimately sway users to buy Windows Mobile-based tablets. Clearly, Apple is winning the BYOD war by a large margin and this serves as Microsoft's endorsement of that. Where that leaves Microsoft's mobile strategy, in the long run, is an unanswered question.

 

Chromecast - Instant Review

My Google Chromecast arrived today. I was excited to get my hands on it, since my daughter commandeered our Roku box to her room about a year ago, so Netflix for me has been limited to the 9.7" ipad screen since then.

I'm usually quick to bash Best Buy, but I want to give them kudos here. While the Google Play Store and Amazon were out of stock, BestBuy.com processed my order and delivered it right away.

The great thing about Chromecast is its simplicity. When you unbox it, you get a dongle, a USB power cord and a flexible HDMI adapter, without which I would not have been able to plug mine into the TV, which sits against the wall.

It took about 5 minutes to setup the Chromecast, and 3 of those were spent trying to locate the HDMI port by feel without removing the big screen TV from the wall. Once I had it plugged in, the website instructions had be connected in about a minute or two.

And the results...

It's great. So far, I've watched a 1982 Clash concert from Tokyo, on YouTube and am about to watch Orange is the New Black on Netflix. Don't Joe Strummer, Mick Jones and the gang look much better on the big screen?

So, is it as good as a Roku or Apple TV?

Well, today both of those have more content than the Chromecast. But that gap will soon close. GigaOm is reporting that Chromecast has struck deals with Vimeo and Redbox Instant, with HBO Go and Plex to follow soon after. And you have to expect that every website doing video will add the Chromecast button soon (with the possible exception of direct competitors like iTunes and Amazon). 

What's great about the Chromecast is its portability. I can definitely see buying a second one to use for travel. Since it takes only a minute to set up, why not use a Chromecast in your hotel room? It's a great chance to catch up on those episodes of Bob's Burgers you've been meaning to watch.

The Publisher's Guide to Mobile and Tablet Development

During the past 12-18 months I've had more conversations with publishers about tablet and mobile than about any other topic. In fact, it's probably more than the next three topics combined.

The speed in which mobile and table computing are overtaking the desktop is unprecedented. According to Deloitte, more than one in five Americans own a tablet device. And every day, new vendors and agencies come along pitching products and solutions. The result for most publishers is confusion.

In speaking with colleagues at Newstex, I learned that they were seeing the same confusion among many of their customers. 

So, working closely with the Newstex team, I've authored a new eBook, The Publisher's Guide to Mobile and Tablet Development, which is currently available for free download.

The eBook starts with strategy, exploring 7 mobile content business models, noting that many publishers overlook new revenue opportunities on mobile. From there, it aims to demystify much of the mobile landscape, helping publishers understand the differences in platforms and providing tools to simplify issues like the app vs mobile web decision.

The last half of the book provides an action plan to help publishers implement their mobile strategy. Examples and case studies are provided throughout to help you understand the decisions made by other publishers - and their implications.

Whether you've already launched multiple iPhone, iPad and Android apps or are just trying to move past the hype and understand the mobile content space, this eBook provides quick and valuable insights. Download your free copy here.

A special thanks to Tom Shultz of Creative Attitude for his terrific design work.

Flipboard's New Curation Platform a Boon for Brands

Last night, Flipboard 2.0 was released. 

The new version includes a curation platform that allows anyone to create a Flipboard "magazine" by curating content and sharing it with others. Here's Tech Readings, a Flipboard magazine I've created this morning.

The user interface couldn't be easier. From any article, simply click the + icon and add it to your magazine.

For the avid RSS reader/curator, this is a great new tool. Against the backdrop of outrage at Google dropping Reader, I realized that between most of my content consumption comes via Twitter and Flipboard these days, with Reader a distant third. With this new curation tool, Flipboard should become an even more important tool for me.

Yet I think the real opportunity for Flipboard will come with brands. As brands move into the publishing space, there's tremendous opportunity for them to create custom magazines for niche communities, using proprietary content, curated external content, or, ideally, a blend of both.

And this potentially creates new revenue opportunities for Flipboard. A professional version of the curation platform might allow brands to have some control over layout, to include their own branding and to package it up as their own branded app.

Those capabilities could also be of interest to publishers and informal curators within the enterprise. 

Flipboard has delivered a great reading experience since its launch. There's an opportunity for them to create a similarly great experience for curation and publishing. I'm excited to see how brands and publishers begin to experiment with these new tools.

 

Don't Judge the Microsoft Surface Just Yet

If the holiday season is any measure, the Microsoft (MSFT) Surface and Windows 8 have been a complete dud. In fact, I saw this headline come across my stream this morning: Sell Microsoft NOW! Game Over - Ballmer Loses.

The article, by Adam Hartung, notes that for the Christmas period, Microsoft sold only 5% as many Surface tablets as Apple did iPads.

To be frank, I’m surprised they sold that many.

This first version of the Surface was aimed at consumers. And why would a consumer buy a Surface rather than an iPad, an iPad Mini or a Nexus 7?

• The Surface runs on Windows RT. It doesn’t run Windows software. Instead, it runs special Surface apps that you can download from the Microsoft Store. And how many apps are in the Microsoft Store? Around 20,000 at last count. Compare that to the one million apps in the Apple App Store.
• Add the fact that the Microsoft Surface does not yet support cellular (3G/4G/LTE) access – it’s a WiFi-only product today. And most of the initial reviews of the Surface were lukewarm at best.
• Even those users who don’t like Apple, or feel Apple is becoming too powerful, have options like the Google Nexus 7.

So the question is not why Microsoft only sold about a million Surface tablets to-date. It’s why anyone would have chosen the Surface instead of the alternatives.

For Microsoft, the goal is not to have the best consumer tablet product. That game is over and Apple (AAPL) has clearly won. Microsoft is focused on the enterprise and I believe that they still have a realistic shot at gaining strong market share there.

The Surface Pro, previewed to journalists at CES, is due for release the end of January. And while it shares a name with its consumer-focused sibling, it’s a completely different product. The Surface Pro has an Intel I7 processor and runs the full Windows 8, just like any laptop or desktop PC. It won’t be quite as portable as an iPad – more like a MacBook Air in size and weight – but it will be the first touch-screen tablet computer to run a full computer operating system.

The Surface Pro will be a compelling solution for many enterprise IT departments. While the BYOD trend has taken hold at many organizations, most large enterprise companies still have limited or no support for user-owned devices on their networks. That’s why you still see so many people carrying both an iPhone (for personal use) and a Blackberry (for corporate email). At many large companies, users have both a desktop PC and a laptop, with the latter used largely for travel purposes. As it comes time to upgrade those laptops, it would make sense to swap them out for Surface Pros. While the Surface Pro costs as much as a laptop ($899), it would probably make users happier and reduce pressure on corporate IT to fully support employee-owned iPads.

The good news for Microsoft is that these organizations tend to buy devices in large quantities. A hospital looking to provide its nurses and doctors with tablets could buy several thousand. Large corporations could buy even more. And government agencies? The US Department of Defense just inked a $600 million contract for the Windows 8 operating system. Just think how many Surface Pros they could buy if they decide it's the right mobile device for them.   

Personally, I don’t see myself switching. I’m happy with my MacBook Air and my iPad and I've never been much of a supporter (or defender) of Microsoft. But for large companies locked into the Windows platform, the Surface Pro has the potential to be the device of choice for mobile computing.

Image courtesy Paulo Ordoveza Flickr.com/8211313831 

What Are Your Favorite Content Apps?

I'm writing an ebook aimed at helping publishers develop and implement their mobile strategy.

One section of that book will spotlight apps from publishers that get it right. I've got a bunch in mind, but would love to get your suggestions on content apps that are deserving of recognition.

First, to define what I'm looking for, I'm focused on apps from publishers, not on generic readers. So, the NY Times app would be a fit, but Flipboard or Pulse would not.

The focus can be b2b or b2c; I'll include native apps, mobile web apps and hybrid apps in the discussion. Content can be text, images or video. And I'm looking across a wide range of business models - free apps for brand awareness, paid subscriptions, content-enabled mobile commerce, digital-print bundles, sponsored apps and more.

Please respond using this short, one question survey.

If you'd like, you may add comments below. Or, if you prefer, you can email your suggestions to me at barry-at-contentmattersllc-dot-com.

Thanks for your help!

NOOK Sharpens Focus on Education Market with Pearson Stake

Pearson (NYSE:PSO) has taken a 5% stake in the recently spunoff NOOK Media LLC division of Barnes & Noble (NYSE:BKS) with an $89.5 million investment.

The investment values NOOK Media at $1.789 billion, unchanged from its recent spinoff. After the Pearson investment, the Barnes & Noble stake will be reduced to 78.2% of the company, with Microsoft (MSFT) owning the remaining 16.8%.

The investment was clearly strategic for Pearson, as a means of providing more seamless technology solutions for the education market. According to Pearson North America CEO Will Etheridge:

"With this investment we have entered into a commercial agreement with NOOK Media that will allow our two companies to work closely together in order to create a more seamless and effective experience for students. It is another example of our strategy of making our content and services broadly available to students and faculty through a wide range of distribution partners."

At the same time, Barnes & Noble filed an 8K indicating that "the Nook business will not meet the company’s prior projection for fiscal year 2013″.

The NOOK is a product in a tough position. While the NOOK HD has aimed to expand its capabilities beyond that of a single-function e-reader, it faces a highly competitive market. Traffic generated by Nooks are a fraction of that from the Kindle and are a rounding error when compared to the iPad. As single-function gadgets are subsumed by smartphones and tablets (see iPod for example), the life expectancy of the standalone e-reader market will be short. 

As I've previously written, I don't see a promising future for the NOOK as a general purpose e-reader or tablet. Instead, they should narrow their focus to the educational  and early reader markets, where they are better positioned for success. As I wrote last fall:

Barnes & Noble needs to root itself deeply into the textbook market. That market is up for grabs and it seems that Apple or Barnes & Noble will become the likely winner. Barnes & Noble should move quickly to secure the needed partnerships and focus its efforts on winning there.

The educational technology market remains somewhat fragmented. Apple has clearly set its sights on the classroom. I think it's time for Barnes & Noble to focus all of its efforts on this market. If the Nook cannot gain significant market share in the education space, it will have no viable future as a platform.

 

Lessons Unlearned: Why The Daily Shouldn't Derail Your Tablet Strategy

During the past week, my Twitter stream has been filled with various thoughts on the demise of News Corp’s (NWS) tablet-centric news app, The Daily (including my own). Some, perhaps in an effort to be provocative, have suggested that the end of The Daily signals the idea that tablet-based publishing itself has proven a failed model. Here are a few of those stories:

Felix Salmon on The impossibility of tablet-native journalism.

Mathew Ingram: Why Rupert Murdoch's bold bet on The Daily was doomed from the start.

The failure of The Daily says little about the future of tablet publishing, and mostly tells the tale of a failed publishing initiative. Let’s take a look at what The Daily was:

A tablet-only (to start), paid subscription, consumer app, providing general news content, with a very high budget. 

Now, let's break that down into its parts:

Tablet-only: By the end, The Daily had moved beyond tablets to include smartphone, and also had integrated the ability to share content via the web. But to start, it was a single-platform (iPad) product. And the fact that it was optimized for the iPad was both a strength and a weakness. 

Paid subscription consumer news app: the good news is that we are seeing paid content take hold in various markets. But consumers are only willing to pay for content not perceived to be readily available for free elsewhere.

High budget: one of the challenges large companies have when trying to launch something new is that they bring with them high cost structures. Startups don’t dangle 7-figure salaries to attract talent, but large companies fall into an expense base that’s not sustainable. Oh, and The Daily was the only app to run a Super Bowl commercial.  

Yet, despite that high cost structure, The Daily really only faced a challenge once News Corp split into two companies. As part of a single, diversified entertainment business, a $30m annual budget for the Daily was almost a rounding error, easily covered by box office proceeds for the movie Avatar in Poland. Not much to pay for a real-time R&D lab, whose learnings can be applied throughout the multi-billion dollar company. Yet, split off into a business already wracked by difficulties, it became an expensive luxury.

So, what lessons can we learn from The Dailly

Mobile First vs Tablet-Only: There’s a real difference between being Mobile First and being Tablet Only. The Daily became a walled garden, making it difficult to share content or to shift your reading from one platform to another.

In building digital products, it’s critical to understand user behavior. Will users skim your content on their mobile device during the morning commute, marking content to read on the desktop when they get to the office? Or, are they marking content during the day to read later on their tablet on the ride home? Do users need to share your content with peers? Particularly for b2b content, the need to shift from one platform to another is critical.

User Experience Matters: While The Daily ultimately failed in reaching their goal of a half-million paying subscribers to a consumer news product, they did exceed 100,000 paid subs. That’s pretty impressive considering the ubiquity of free news sources on tablets and the web. User engagement was high and they created many real fans. Rather than a boring “replica” app, the Daily created a compelling user experience, leveraging the iPad in ways few others have done.

Specialized, hard-to-find information beats generic news: This one almost goes unsaid, but while many companies are finding that users will continue to pay for information they can’t find elsewhere (particularly in b2b),there’s no appetite to pay for content where there is a viable free substitute. Editorial quality and a big marketing budget can’t overcome “good enough” free alternatives.

I’ll be exploring these and related issues this Thursday at the Specialized Information Publishers Association (“SIPA”) Digital Publishing and Marketing Institute conference in Miami.

SIPA members, by definition, should not face the problem of selling generic information to consumers. These companies offer niche products aimed at b2b markets. During this session, we’ll be exploring trends in mobile and tablet use, particularly among business users and explore how to develop an appropriate mobile and tablet strategy. We'll take a hands-on look at publishers who are doing it right (and a few who appear to be on a misguided path). I hope to see you there.

Related articles

In Defense of the Daily (RIP)

Why Magazine Apps Suck

News Corp.'s The Daily: Successful Experiment, Failed Publication

The Daily closes shop: why the news app was doomed from the start | Jeff Jarvis

Is Mobile First Still The Right Strategy?

There's an interesting discussion going on this morning on Fred Wilson's A VC blog in a post called Rethinking Mobile First. I'd encourage you to read the entire post AND the comments, but here's a short recap, along with my thoughts.

Fred's post is in response to a post by Origami Labs and Everyme co-founder Vibhu Norby questioning whether mobile is the right platform for many new app developers to focus on and why Origami is pivoting from mobile first to web first.

The Norby post highlights the fact that mobile-centric startup success has been limited to a handful of apps:

Only a handful of apps have succeeded mobile-first: Instagram, Tango, Shazam, maybe 2 or 3 others 

The challenge, as he notes, is that the conversion process from download through true engagement eliminates most users. In the case of Everyme:

At best, we retain 5% of users through the entire onboarding process. Attempts to fix it have raised it only nominally. We are not alone on that count even amongst apps with much better onboarding and many more app versions than our own.

In his response, Fred notes that despite the fact that it's hard, it's necessary:

But just because something is hard doesn't mean you shouldn't try to do it. I am convinced the next set of large and valuable consumer facing services will be built with mobile as the primary user interface. You can see it in the success of Uber and Etsy this holiday season. That's where your users are most of the time. And if you don't design your products and services for what is rapidly becoming the dominant UI, you will not maximize the success of your business in the long run.

I tend to agree with Fred on this one. Mobile IS difficult. It's hard to get your app noticed in the first place, hard to get users to download it and even harder to get them to return to it a second, third and fourth time. But that's not altogether different than the web experience. In the early days of the web, people bookmarked sites all the time. I had hundreds of bookmarks in my Netscape bookmark manager. Of those hundreds of bookmarks there were even a dozen or more than I returned to frequently, but most just sat in the list, never to be clicked again. 

Your platform is not the biggest factor in user engagement. Your application is. Are you providing a compelling experience that users rely upon in their daily life? If so, I'm convinced you can deliver that experience on any platform. That's not to say that the experience won't differ on the mobile platform than on the desktop, but if you deliver value, users will return.

That said, the platform is key in how users interact with your app. Does your onboarding process require users to type a lot? That's fine on the web, less so on tablets and a real challenge on smartphones. Does your business model depend on running tons of ads on every page? Again, that may be fine on the desktop (though I could argue otherwise), less so on mobile devices.

The key, of course, is understanding what you are enabling users to do, then optimizing your offering (whether a native app, a mobile web app or a web page) to deliver that capability as simply as possible. Understanding your audience is critical. Are you aiming for smartphones or tablets? Do you expect a lean forward or a lean back experience?

And mobile first doesn't have to mean app-first. For publishers, mobile first can simply be rethinking your content so that it thrives in a mobile and/or tablet experience. That may mean creating shorter articles with more images and video content. If you build web pages that look great on tablets, they'll probably serve you well on the desktop. The reverse is rarely the case.

So, is mobile development easy? Not at all. Is there a simple path to success? No. But does that suggest that mobile-first is not the right strategy? No. Your customers are shifting more of their time to tablets and mobile devices. Mary Meeker's latest study shows that 29% of American adults currently own a tablet or eReader. And it's safe to say that after this holiday season, that number will probably be more like 33%. Is that a trend that you're willing to bet against?

Success will come to those publishers and developers who understand their audience and delight them with engaging products on the platforms where they are increasingly spending their time.

 

Related articles

Why We're Pivoting from Mobile-first to Web-first

Beware the Mobile-First Strategy

Rethinking Mobile First

In Defense of the Daily (RIP)

Many took delight in today’s announcement that News Corp (NWS) would be shuttering the Daily, the first paid tablet-only news product. I take no pleasure in seeing that product fail.

I’m biased in that I had the opportunity to work with the Daily team while at Crowd Fusion. Yet beyond getting to know many talented people, I got the chance to see them doing some really great things.

As many publishers have discovered, it’s incredibly difficult to differentiate a general news publication. Just the other day, USA Today CEO Larry Kramer was widely quoted as saying he would not charge for USA Today on the web, as its not unique enough content:

"There is so much national news out there,” Kramer said. “I think we would lose more than we would gain.”

The Daily struggled to differentiate its content. When it was first launched, the editorial content was a bit weak. But they definitely strengthened their editorial during their two year run.  More importantly, the Daily, more than virtually any other publication, has experimented with ways to best leverage the tablet environment.

Portrait or Landscape? While cost-cutting forced the Daily to shift to “portrait only” last summer, the Daily initially had two complete versions of every page – one optimized for portrait (vertical) mode, the other for landscape (horizontal). It’s not just that the page could be viewed either way, but that they actually did a full layout of each edition in both portrait and landscape mode so that every page could be optimized for either. This enabled features and functionality that would only work in landscape mode, for example.

Visual news While Pinterest and Instagram have made the image the key element of the mobile web, the Daily was early to realize that tablets were a visual experience and that text-heavy pages would not fly. Today, many others have followed suit – Reuters Wider Image, the Guardian’s PictGrid and others – but the Daily was early to that decision. And it makes reading the Daily on an iPad much more enjoyable than reading a typical newspaper app.

Video content Again, the Daily may not be unique in this, but they were quick to realize that HD video was a key aspect of tablet news consumption.

Navigation The Daily simplified their navigation this summer, but the app offered multiple forms of navigation at its start. A news carousel, similar to the iTunes cover flow, greeted new readers, while a traditional table-of-contents was available as well.

360 Degree Photos The Daily’s 360-degree photos were another way in which this daily newspaper became more of a visual magazine. Whether swiping your way through the St. Patrick’s Day Parade or the surface of Mars, these panoramic images were compelling.

Did the Daily have its faults? No question. The editorial content got better, but was never unique enough to make it a must-read for me. The navigation features were cool but remained clunky at times. And despite adding social sharing and other features, they were never able to fully integrate the app with the web. And while they exposed all of their functionality to advertisers, it seemed few were able to come up with creative campaigns that took full advantage of the device.

Update: Ceros (formerly Crowd Fusion) Chief Scientist Brian Alvey adds his thoughts to the Daily's legacy from a technology standpoint. While some suggest the $30 million per year cost of the Daily was high, noting that:

"...that’s a great R&D lab within a $60 billion company. If you spend $30 million every year to test every new platform that’s actually cheap.”

In the end, all of these features were not enough to attract the 500,000 paid subscribers that News Corp set as its break-even goal. It’s really hard to get consumers to pay for news, regardless of the container. But many of these features are now prominent in other news apps, by News Corp and its competitors.  The Wall Street Journal has begun adding 360 panoramic images to its iPad app, and countless publishers are investing in more video content.

And while it’s easy to poke fun at the failure of this well-funded startup effort, I would instead commend News Corp for doing what’s really hard for large companies to do – innovate. At a time when most publisher's tablet and mobile apps are Zinio-like replicas of print, the Daily attempted to create a product that new and exciting.I hope this failure won't make other publisher afraid to even try.