As with almost ALL Apple communications there is enough vague language and under-specified "requirements" in the two paragraphs clipped at the end of this post to set off a blaze of debate capable of consuming nearly all the oxygen on the web. Apple are nothing if not masterful at crafting quasi technical press releases that get people talking and thinking about Apple, iPad, iPhone, iOS, and the way in which those products dominate their markets.
Many analysts are thrown by the big flares (you must use Apple's in-app subscription, you can't link from the app to an outside store, and Apple will take 30% of your sales) and completely miss the big picture. For me, the real news in this whole announcement is that bit that states:
"Customers purchasing a subscription through the App Store will be given the option of providing the publisher with their name, email address and zip code when they subscribe."
The OPTION. This is clearly a user focused plan and it's overriding goal is to protect and enhance the experience for users–not developers and publishers. That's important and it's something all developers and publishers should fully support. That many are not says more about them than it does about Apple.
While it has been reported (somewhat simplistically) that the sticking point for publishers has been access to user data, what's been ignored has been the ways in which the Apple firewall around user data is actually an invitation to innovate.
Here's a scenario: I'm a publisher that offers digital content across a number of platforms (web, iOS, Android, Boxee, Playstation, Windows Phone 7, etc.). I offer a digital subscription that opens access to all those platforms. Simply sign up through me and I give you a name and password that opens the locks on all of those doors. Have a game console in the living room, an iPad in the den, and an Android in your pocket? One account, one subscription, multiple platforms.
Now imagine you come to me from Apple. You download my app from iTunes and open it and get an offer to sign up using your iTunes account. I'm offering that subscription at the same price as (or cheaper than) the other one I offer through my site. Apple is taking 30% of that sale. Yet since I (the publisher) have no automatic way to connect that AppleID to my complete digital subscription package (and in fact am barred from doing so by Apple's terms) that account is restricted to Steve's world. (At least until Apple starts federating AppleID the same way Google, Twitter, Facebook and a bunch of others have.)
The Apple is Evil crowd is probably thinking that Apple is going to try to find a way to stop this from happening, but there is just no way they can. As powerful as Apple is they simply cannot stop the world from turning or extract a tax from every transaction that happens on the web everywhere. Nor do I think they even want to. This announcement is simply about making life easier for the loyalist Apple user, not about dominating publishing or the web or life. It's about reducing or eliminating confusion and friction on Apple devices. And as far as I'm concerned that's a positive thing. Publishers who use Apple’s subscription service in their app can also leverage other methods for acquiring digital subscribers outside of the app. For example, publishers can sell digital subscriptions on their web sites, or can choose to provide free access to existing subscribers. Since Apple is not involved in these transactions, there is no revenue sharing or exchange of customer information with Apple. Publishers must provide their own authentication process inside the app for subscribers that have signed up outside of the app. However, Apple does require that if a publisher chooses to sell a digital subscription separately outside of the app, that same subscription offer must be made available, at the same price or less, to customers who wish to subscribe from within the app. In addition, publishers may no longer provide links in their apps (to a web site, for example) which allow the customer to purchase content or subscriptions outside of the app.
Protecting customer privacy is a key feature of all App Store transactions. Customers purchasing a subscription through the App Store will be given the option of providing the publisher with their name, email address and zip code when they subscribe. The use of such information will be governed by the publisher’s privacy policy rather than Apple’s. Publishers may seek additional information from App Store customers provided those customers are given a clear choice, and are informed that any additional information will be handled under the publisher’s privacy policy rather than Apple’s. |
The following sums up in a single sentence EXACTLY why so many magazine publishers are destined to fail on the iPad or any other tablet. They have no interest in engaging their readers on any other level than the cold, hard, transactional level of the credit card. They simply do not see the app itself as medium for reader engagement. The app, like the magazine, is a pronouncement. There is either an unwillingness or an inability to understand that the very nature of the digital channel demands an information exchange. Like a drug dealer they just want to take your cash, hand you the dope, and then walk briskly away in the opposite direction. Most magazines are at their core subscription businesses, and
publishing execs like Time Inc. CEO Jack Griffin have taken a hard
line, arguing that it’s critical that they be able to collect
personal information like names and e-mail addresses from digital
customers, so they can offer renewals and other products. Read more at www.mediaweek.com |
John Boehner, as Speaker of the House, is now second in line for the highest office in the land. He is, as much as the President himself, a guiding voice in the great discussion that is American politics. When a person of that stature coddles demonstrably false notions, notions that in fact border on insanity, notions that in many ways are as divorced from reality and contemptuous of government as the incomprehensible and insane views of Jared Laughner, it not only degrades the chances of quality discussion, it stokes, validates, and grows the dark underbelly of psychopathic discontent flowing through American politics.
Obviously the sort of violence and insanity that erupted in that parking lot in Arizona could be found even in societies that engage in the most measured and thoughtful discourse. Still, one can only wonder just how much a pervasive media environment soaked in the militaristic rhetoric of revolution, conflict, and violence fans the flames of that insanity.
What truly amazes me is the extent to which folks in the USA just don't see this. Sure there is some vague anger out there over the economy, but the way in which that anger is directed away from Wall Street and toward the Federal Government leaves me dumbstruck. Sure DC is filled with spineless sell-out scumbags, but that's pretty much a product of our own ignorance, not a pre-requisite of government. If we put half as much collective energy into choosing our representatives as we put into choosing the next American Idol, we might get somewhere. All in all if we (the people) are going to have any say in this fight we (the people) are going to want good, strong, active representation–not a shredded, hollow, shell of corporate stooges. Of all the dangers we face Socialism is for certain the least of our worries. So if you're angry, if you want a tea party, if you want to take America back–stop harping on Obama or Democrats or Republicans and look at what's happening. Enough is enough, indeed. Government waste does not begin to equal what the banks and financial institutions have stolen. Yes, it needs to be dealt with, but it is nothing but a diversion from what is really going on. What is happening is that the American people are being asked to pay for the money that the Federal Reserve created so that the government could hand it back over to bail out Wall Street and the Banks. It’s that simple. The Federal Reserve created money, loaned it to the American people, whose government handed it over to the banks, leaving the American people to pay the money back, plus interest. The banks robbed America, plain and simple. |
Smaller government? Less regulation? Why? So that the public will have even less strength and representation. The government is your government; of, by, and for the people. Why would you want to disempower yourself against a financial and corporate juggernaut that has already proven itself anti-social, and anti-environmental, while being pro-war, and singularly profit-oriented? It’s madness. You’ve been robbed, and pillaged, and are now being convinced that you should weaken the only defense you have. |
The people of the world are under attack from a small number of very wealthy people who have convinced us that they own everything, and that we have to pay them for our very existence. It is time to wake up and realize the confidence game with which we have all been victimized. Austerity is what our politicians should be demanding from the banks and the corporations, not us. The right to exist is what we should be granting corporations and financial institutions, not the other way around. The constituents should be the most powerful lobbyists in any capital, not the corporations and banks. We’ve allowed our world to be turned upside down. Enough is enough. |
There's not much to say about this... it makes me sick and more than just a little worried about where the path we're on may lead. What I find most worrisome isn't simply the amount of money being made by those at the top, but rather they way in which it has been steadily increasing and how its growth can be directly traced to and correlated with specific - and bipartisan - legislation. That Obama is just another in a line of Financial pawns is upsetting, but really not surprising. In the light of this kind of thing it really makes me scratch my head and wonder how people can get so partisan. Wake up folks - no - LOOK UP folks. We are being swindled.
Jamie Dimon, chairman and CEO of JPMorgan Chase & Co., praises the President’s agreement with Republicans to extend the Bush tax cuts.
“If we’re going to strengthen our economy and grow jobs, this type of outreach — and cooperation between the administration, Congress, and the private sector — are critical,” says Dimon.
Dimon met last week with the President. Thirty other CEOs are meeting with him today.
Dimon’s compensation over the last three years has averaged $21,991,394 a year. The tax deal agreed to between President Obama and the Republicans will give Dimon and extra $1,179,000 next year, according to an analysis by Citizens for Tax Justice.
The bank Dimon heads was also the beneficiary of the giant Wall-Street bailout of 2007 and 2008. JPMorgan Chase & Co, along with other Wall Street banks, also poured millions of dollars into a lobbying campaign to water down the financial reforms Congress considered earlier this year.
|
For some time now I have been trying, both publicly and privately, to more clearly understand and communicate my gut feeling that the magazine format–and the mode of reading it represents–is not an anachronism in a networked media ecology. To that end I give you the following clip from Kevin Kelly's book New Rules for the New Economy (which is freely available in a number of formats from his web site–see: http://www.kk.org/newrules/blog/about.php )
This clip, written more than ten years ago, is still spot on in describing the ways in which the network incorporates rather than replaces pre-existing forms of communication. In that respect we might see media, technology, and the network as more of a continuum which is not this then that, but rather a universal adaptive ecosystem where new forms and new ideas are not introduced wholesale and ignorant of the substrate in which they are cultured, but instead evolve within a framework of the adjacent possible.
On a side note: I would be criminally remise if I did not acknowledge three recent books which have greatly helped me clarify my thinking in this regard: Kelly's latest "What Technology Wants" – Steven Johnson's "Where Good Ideas Come From" – Douglas Rushkoff's "Program or Be Programmed" – These three books read in succession have lit something of a dim fire in my mind and have served as the fertile compost of more specific thoughts regarding media, magazines, and the future of the form. Please buy and read them. On the new mess media, rumor, conspiracy, and paranoia run rampant. These have always been the downsides of communities; network midlands will also have to learn to deal with impenetrable webs and paranoic sensibilities. Capitalizing on these disadvantages, broadcast will thrive symbiotically within the network economy. Sometimes real-time signals en masse are needed and wanted. Broadcast's flyover will be used, or material will be directly pushed to users. The web needs broadcast to focus attention, and broadcast needs the web to find communities. Read more at www.kk.org |
There is indeed a misunderstanding at work here, but I think it's spencerotica who is misunderstanding my point in response to Khoi's post (which does in fact question the relevance of the "mode of reading the a magazine represents"). As spencerotica correctly states a magazine "will never be able to match the depth or personalization of a social aggregation tool" – but that's kind of my point. Magazines aren't highly personalized and that's a good thing. They represent a coherent point of view - a potential counterfactual that is even more necessary in an information environment that is predisposed to confirmation bias. The disintegrated, pick and choose flow of digital media is a wonderful thing (I live in Google Reader/Feedly and scan the feeds of 1135 blogs every day), but we lose something when we always play the single and forget that it's actually part of an album. When we confine our intellectual investigation to a parade of fragmented ideas we are abdicating the true value inherent in the integrated whole. Ultimately it's not about whether magazines are better than social aggregation or RSS - its about the fact that they are different in a very important and often overlooked way. @Mike Turro’s Beautiful Misunderstanding |
Yesterday, designer Khoi Vin argued that, fundamentally, the publishing industry’s “experimentation” with converting print magazine’s to iPad apps is wrongheaded and doomed for failure. Beyond usability issues (no social sharing, no integrated subscription models, etc.), he argued that there is no future in recreating yesterday’s experiences on tomorrow’s technology.
Exactly.
Unfortunately, this argument is fairly vague, and I think that has led to some misunderstanding. Nowhere is Vin railing against the reading experience of print magazines. Instead, he finds fault with the idea that any app sandboxed against the world could be successful in the long term. No matter how well-produced a magazine is, it will never be able to match the depth or personalization of a social aggregation tool. What happens when a Netflix-like app for magazine articles is created? |
Khoi Vinn is absolutely right–about the obvious, most agreed upon points of failure in the current crop of iPad magazines. You can't share from them (though from some you can), they are lacking integrated subscription models (though some are not), and they are bloated and take too long to download (though some are light and download fairly quickly). He is also spot on with regard to the way Adobe and other software vendors prey on publishers and sell them on the notion that difficult change is nothing more than a bad dream–but that's another post entirely.
Khoi's mistake (I call it beautiful because it seems logical and there is no hard evidence that it is in fact a mistake) is his apparent assumption that the magazine form–collected articles, enveloped by an informed editorial vision, and bound by issue–is something of a one medium pony. While that model was indeed birthed by the technology of the press and it's pace dictated by the ebb and flow of the post it's not at all clear that print is the only environment it can live in. It may be that the networked, digital, real time world–a world built and maintained by an exponentially increasing degree of choice–actually demands a slower, focused, slightly out of time, "print-centric" option as a balance.
The fact of the matter is that the mode of reading that a magazine represents is a mode that people are decreasingly interested in, that is making less and less sense as we forge further into this century, and that makes almost no sense on a tablet. As usual, these publishers require users to dive into environments that only negligibly acknowledge the world outside of their brand, if at all — a problem that’s abetted and exacerbated by the full-screen, single-window posture of all iPad software. In a media world that looks increasingly like the busy downtown heart of a city — with innumerable activities, events and alternative sources of distraction around you — these apps demand that you confine yourself to a remote, suburban cul-de-sac.
I find it peculiar that in the sped up, distracted, busy downtown heart of the city that is our media environment Khoi's prescription for success is to give the inundated reader more of the same. If we accept that the broad mission of the publisher is to enlighten and inform the reader is it not incumbent upon that publisher to try and penetrate this (social) media noise with something approximating a signal? Shouldn't the smart publisher be the proprietor of the quiet and coherent cafe around the corner? Shouldn't the aim of the magazine in the digital world be to pull passersby out of the bright lights of Naked Cowboy Times Square and into a quiet space where ideas can be presented for consideration in a focused and structured way? Just like slow food, shouldn't there be a place for slow media?
Undoubtedly there will be those who read these words and say "Yes. There is a place for slow media–print." Khoi himself indicates this in the mention of his paid and seemingly satisfying subscription to the printed New Yorker. While I agree that print is indeed a wonderful and slow medium that quite effectively provides the sort of experience I describe above it is also a very expensive and elitist medium. While digital technologies like magcloud have made print a bit more accessible, it is still no match for digital media as an egalitarian platform for independent and fringe voices. Beyond that it is a near certainty that many of the titles currently using the technology of ink on paper will not be able to sustain that for too much longer. Exactly when the cost of manufacturing print will exceed the value it brings to readers is anybody's guess, but any medium that relies so heavily on cheap and available natural resources such as oil and pulp is volatile to say the least.
Without a doubt the future of magazines–both as an industry and a publishing framework–is uncertain. However, to write off the reading experience provided by a good magazine as a relic of the print world is extremely shortsighted. When Khoi offhandedly and anecdotally declares "that the mode of reading that a magazine represents is a mode that people are decreasingly interested in" he is assuming (though he does give a slight nod to the contrary) that the current use patterns of the web's most emphatic users (also iPad's early adopters) are an indication of the eventual use patterns of the population of tablet users as a whole. Khoi is certainly a smart guy, but it may be a bit early to make that call.
If the success of the iPad says anything it's that the rush to diffused, unbound, atomized content pieces may have been a bit of a bubble itself. Even Flipboard–the app that Khoi himself singles out as "more of a window to the world at large" can be seen as a reaction to the ethereal, unbound, drifting, unfocused, overwhelming content cloud. That Flipboard takes the magazine as its prime metaphor is quite telling–even if they have stripped the form of its most compelling (perhaps even defining) components. The solution that Flipboard provides is the same as your traditional magazine–coherence. It's prime directive is to create meaning from a vast ocean of data–with an algorithm. Neat trick for sure, but the meaning it's creating is farcically specific, tragically ephemeral, and ultimately useless. In trying to focus the deluge of data for me it neither empowers me with the filtering skills I'll need if/when I need to deal directly with the raw data nor challenges me with the intellectual perspective inherent in the traditional editorial model.
While tools like Flipboard are compelling to a certain extent, the fact that these types of tools are engineered in a web first way gives me pause. In the Flipboard world the human is simply a datapoint–another binary instance in the technology's evolving web of complexity and choice. Everyday more of these instances, more perspectives, more images, more sounds, more words stumble into the web and enter the pool of potential interactions. This pool is deep and wide and a whole lot of fun to dive into. We can easily drift into anywhere or anyone at anytime. It is indeed a serendipity engine. Yet when confronted with so much fluid data it's important that we also have the choice to opt out–to slow down lest we float aimlessly away link by link. If we engineer ourselves beyond that point–if we only build systems and tools that respond to the web's need for us to lust after information and connection, and we neglect the time honored tools of slow reflection, we run the risk of slipping from users to used.
Marco Roth at n+1 magazine on the culture of victimization that fuels what he sees as the latent racism of the tea party movement. Not that I go in much for the broad brush approach to analyzing political movements, but he does a great job of explicating the ways in which the tropes the Tea Party uses have been used by ethno-nationalist movements throughout American history. But it’s futile to insist on nuances of history and law when we’re speaking the language of “offense.” The mythical heartland Sarah Palin speaks from, or for, is full of these voiceless, downtrodden plain folk who are constantly being offended, for whom there is no end to the offenses, real or imagined, perpetrated against them: the Mexican immigrant speaking his native tongue, the Muslim at his prayers, the black man drinking from a public water fountain (oh wait, that one’s not offensive anymore . . .). One of the more charming stories in Budiansky’s history of Reconstruction concerns a Southern gentleman who wanted a freed slave whipped because he had the temerity to wish him “good morning” without being spoken to first. These offended people see with such dreadful clarity things that don’t exist, and so remake reality to suit their grievances. |
Of course, the majority of white Americans, like the majority of all other kinds of Americans, have good reason to feel aggrieved. They are the victims of bad economic and foreign policies; their state budgets are crippled by debts, their federal legislature is paralyzed, environmental catastrophe stalks their shores, oceans, and atmosphere. But when they go to the polls in November, if they go at all, a fair number of them will cast their vote on the basis of who stood up for them against imaginary Muslim hordes invading lower Manhattan to pray to their terrorist God. Read more at nplusonemag.com |
This is so incredibly simple and obvious it's amazing that it's not really common practice. It highlights the extent to which marketing communications is still mired in the demographically driven, generationally directed, yet hopelessly opaque bulk mindset of the previous century. Not sure if it's because crafting more personal communication is perceived as too complex–or perhaps too creepy? I mean if Facelessbook starts talking to me like they are actually one of my friends I'm not sure that it screams "we respect your privacy" in the way Dyson would hope it might. Know your customer, and talk to that person as an individual, not as someone in a bucket. Don’t talk to them as ‘Millennials,’ talk to them as ‘You, Joe, who checked in at Times Square last week.’ Take that same consumer intelligence, take that same creativity, take that same ability to personalize and apply it to these people’s data. Explain to them what you know about them in a personal way, in a way they can understand. And then they will trust you; they will make up their minds do we want the free content or not, but it will be a genuinely two-way transaction where there’s real disclosure and real consent. It’s shocking to me that with all the creativity in this industry we can’t figure out how to explain to our own customers what it is we’re doing to them and have them genuinely part of the conversation rather than watching them from behind the two-way mirror. Read more at gigaom.com |
|
