Mobile News Network Tests Out AP’s Digital Cooperative
Important Details: Apple’s new App Store (found in iTunes, through this link) features all kinds of tailored products, all meant to grab some of the popular smartphone’s new users. Publishers may pay special attention to the News channel, but they’ll find scores of intriguing feature ideas in browsing all the channels. Within News, iPhone users find products ranging from Diggerific (social network Digg’s top stories) to India News to Fox News’ user-gen-targeting UReport to Aftonbladet, Sweden’s largest newspaper.
Four US news products stand out. One is national. The New York Times launched with the new iPhone and has received good reviews for its photo-centric navigation, but poorer ones for its load time.
It’s the local marketplace that looks like it may gets lots of attention. The Associated Press has launched its Mobile News Network (MNN) to greet the new iPhone’s arrival. You can check out the good and voluminous (more than 200 comments so far) user feedback, a great source of instant focus groups that will aid product development. MNN has attracted more than 700 US dailies to its fold, including most major news companies other than Gannett, and now covers the top 100 markets, with “a single wireless access point for all news.”
In addition, AP is in talks with both the New York Times and Washington Post to bring both those national news sites onto MNN’s product. “It [MNN] is not a competitive play, it is a portal play,” says Jim Kennedy, VP strategic planning for AP. AP recently led an investment round of $3 million in Verve, a mobile enabler. Kennedy says AP is encouraging newspaper companies to build their own separately branded sites as well.
To incent newspapers to participate in the project, the first major initiative of AP’s Digital Cooperative, AP has reduced participants’ 2009 AP fees by 5% and is returning metadata added to its newspapers’ content (by AP’s processing) to the newspaper companies for their own use. Into the future, AP intends that the Digital Cooperative will serve as an efficient and economical technology hub, helping member papers seize other web opportunities more quickly.
On the MNN roadmap, according to Jeffrey Litvack, AP global director for new media markets, is newspapers’ ability to sell local advertising (and retain revenue), the addition of AP-produced video content and content from broadcasters as well, and the extension of capabilities for more handsets. “We put the consumer first,” says Litvack, in describing the product development approach that allows readers to read full-text stories without linking off. The product can be viewed on the web, here.
NowLocal is the other local news iPhone application, touting itself as “a local news aggregation tool that detects the user’s location.” An initiative of Internet Broadcasting, which builds and maintains a network of online sites for local broadcasters, NowLocal offers 100-word precis of stories from local media, most heavily from broadcasters. Users then link off to stories. No ad revenue model has yet been disclosed.
Lastly, the Express news product from Handmark is an iPhone entry. Express has been a popular paid-subscription product, available for other smartphones. Now, for the iPhone, it’s a free application.
Implications: Outsell believes the current state and direction of mobile offers a couple of interesting tests. As Jim Kennedy notes, mobile is a “green field”; in other words, fairly virgin territory in which publishers have little emotional or financial investment and on which they depend for little revenue. As such, it’s a good test of the Digital Cooperative “all for one” idea, which has been kicking around the US news industry for more than a decade, but not executed on such a scale until now. This execution is brand-new, and its tests will be several:
- Though many newspapers have signed up, many still have to enable the feeds, so that the iPhone “local” interfaces won’t be heavily based on stories processed through AP’s regional bureaus and labeled “AP State Wire.”
- AP must meet its development schedule and move on potential ad sources, on adding video, on adding “relevance” ordering (so that stories are not just arranged “last in, first out”) and on enabling user feedback directly from the phone. The standard of development for the iPhone is a high one, and demands ongoing innovation. For AP, it’s a vital test of its institutional capability to migrate from its legacy “wire” roots and become an internet-savvy news-oriented network.
- The NowLocal launch reinforces the notion that newspapers no longer “own” the local terrain. Broadcasters are moving quickly to claim it as well. In fact, on the iPhone, customers will care increasingly less whether the news comes from legacy newspapers or broadcasters. They – like all internet consumers – will just want it all, well-organized, well-illustrated, well-collected, and, of course, way cool.