Slashdot Mirror
News Corp's The Daily iPad App Shutting Down On December 15
An anonymous reader writes with news that, as predicted, the iPad only newspaper The Daily failed. From the article: "The goal of The Daily was to provide a modern spin on the news cycle by delivering world news draped in a multimedia experience. In other words, The Daily devoted a lot of resources towards adding photos, video, and touch controls to news stories that would otherwise be static. ... It was announced today that The Daily will be closing up shop on December 15 after failing to rake in the dough."
The Daily had OK content. But they did not understand the web. More than once, I took advantage of their trial period, would read a little bit of the daily paper, only to find that the next one had been delivered erasing the previous content. There was no archive, despite continual promises to add one. I told them I would subscribe as soon as they added this feature. Also, why did they require an app to get the content? That meant it wasn't linkable, was restricted to only one device, and couldn't easily be shared.
I firmly believe there are two groups of people: those who want information to "feed" them (passive learners) and those who want to drive the learning experience (active learners.) The passive learners want to have information pushed on them, and have it entertain them and distract them, a la Mythbusters style. The active learners don't want their information to move, wiggle, flash or distract them. They have decided what they want to know and are trying to learn it quickly and efficiently. The active learners go to great pains to get websites to stop moving, flashing, spinning and otherwise try to grab their attention so they can focus on their reading. The passive learners (children, those without a learning goal) would not complain about distractions on websites, instead they seek them out, but generally would not be seeking studious information anyway. Probably more the entertainment and sensational-style news-consumers I would think.
I believe this "newspaper" experiment points out that their target audience consisted of a more mature customer, active-learner, seeking "newspaper-style" news and prefered to drive the experience and learn quickly and efficiently. I don't believe the experiment failed, I think they just misunderstood their audience.
Perhaps if they had tried that with news aimed at grade-school age children they would have found a different acceptance rate.
Sent from my ENIAC
That's FOX undo undo
This would have thrived in Android space. Too bad developers are still buying into the Apple kook-aide.
Posting as AC for obvious reasons.
I interviewed for a job to fix their platform architecture and duck-tape together a proper QA setup for them almost a year ago. What a bunch of idiots! HR and my (thank god) not-to-be manager were absolutely clueless, had no idea what they were talking about and were blatantly unprofessional. The office was "Everyone has a 27-inch iMac and a matching 27-inch thunderbolt display" kinda tech (I'm not joking) and the their 'tech guy' who dropped in the interview asked, "I see PHP on your resume. That's a scripting language, right?" I couldn't make this shit up. Somehow this bunch of incompetent fools managed to turn out a digital publication, no wonder they failed.
Another NewsCorp entity tried to hire me for an iOS QA lead role, and they constantly complained about the quality of their developers. First, I was shocked they could even try to recognize quality, but then I realized that having to wear a tie M-F (non-negotiable) and arriving strictly at 9am, with no perks to speak of, yeah, they were only going to get shitty iOS developers.
If the media companies can't figure out that charging people to view ads is no longer a workable business model, well then... can't help 'em.
OK, Murdoch couldn't even get money out of Apple users. I think it's time for him to admit he has no idea what he is doing.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
In my experience, the venn diagram intersection of:
1). Apple fanboys ... Is very VERY small.
2). The Fox News crowd
3). People who actually prefer to read their news instead of watch it
I actually liked the Daily, especially since I could have it download the mornings news to my ipad that I could read on the train. But there were problems. I didn't like that it wouldn't download the video content and some of the photos. The whole point of downloading the content ahead of time was because I knew I wouldn't have a connection later on.
Well, this one is pretty obvious. I'm seeing it in the job I took a month ago. Instead of giving users what they want, the website is deciding what it wants to show. That's backwards. It's good to see they went out of business, but how many people got negative performance reviews and lost raises and bonuses because they had been given an impossible mandate from the top?
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
Hello this is the 19th century and it wants its app back. From what I can tell the whole news corp model is that each of its wings leverages the others. So you have music and movie people being relentlessly promoted by the news media wing and those entertainment people are generally available for the media while each of the media departments tries to work with greater levels of efficiency brought on by the huge size of the organization in things like centralized sales great cross promotion and the power to make the worthless acts worth far more than they should. What seems to suffer is quality. The various departments will now spend more time promoting each other than a normal media company normally would (which would be zero if it was independent) instead of a relentless pursuit of self improvement. And because an over promoted crap product can be far more profitable than the risk of finding and cultivating a good one they lose the later art. For a while through the 80s and 90s this model was great. But now people are able to continuously demand best of breed in every category the model is starting to become weak. People find new artists their own way and are being told less and less by a small group of baby boomers what to listen to and what to watch. We are finding shows on the likes of AMC (Who the hell knew AMC existed 5 years ago?) We download from iTunes we read blogs, and we watch YouTube (Hello PSY).
To give a simple example of the old way of thinking there is a TV rule on the big networks that Thursday around 8pm - 9pm is the best of the best. So what they would do is to put a show people wanted (Friends) on at 8 until 8:30 then they would put some shlock they wanted to promote on at 8:30 and then something people wanted again on at 9pm. Even if you really didn't wan to watch the 8:30 show they knew you might catch a few minutes after the first show and maybe a few more before the 9pm show and ideally you would simply leave the 8:30 show on and say what the hell. The internal politics for getting your show on at 8:30 were a bloodbath and it certainly had little to do with what people actually wanted. The first big change was of course cable with an ever greater selection of channels, then came DVR devices which made programming timing more and more irrelevant and now there is the slow but sure move to netflix type technologies. All of these are not only resisted on the grounds of piracy or business models but significantly on the basis that the network executives lose the power to foist total crap onto the population. They are having a harder and harder time making it rain on demand.
So when these geriatrics bought MySpace they thought they had another channel where they could start pushing their crap into kids faces. But what they didn't realize was that things move really fast on the internet and their audience slipped through their fingers as soon as they felt that Myspace was not working for them but against them. Not that facebook is some paragon of virtue but it is unlikely that your screen will fill with crap telling you how cool usher or rihanna is over and over.
That this app is being taken out behind the woodshed is not so much an indication that news on the iPad is not the future but that best of breed news as sort of found with Drudge shows that it can work just fine. So if you look at the fragmented modern media world you have the old giants playing every backroom game they can to keep their old models working while you also have a few shining lights of hope (Netflix, if not them then something like them) and interesting Gems hidden here and there and generally not within the old giants. Can anyone here see the people who came up with the Cosby Show greenlighting Breaking Bad?
As a couple of respondents have pointed out, by my simply saying that there are two types that I have made an over-simplification, but I didn't say "only" two types. :) So it's fun to see people adopting an opposing stance and trying to tear my ideas down because truly by doing so they attempt to steer the ship of learning and, exhibiting the "active-learner" characteristic I mentioned, they learn because they are partaking in an active role and thus act as examples which support my theory. If they had read and not replied, or posted a simple supportive assertion, I believe they get a sense that they are taking a sub-optimal learning route, because they would be in the passive mode.
So I have wondered a long time, and the question has been posed many-a-time, why the phenomenon of frequent extreme aggression (aka flame wars) on internet forums? This forum is certainly no exception. I posit that it is hallmark of an active learner, and the internet is the hangout of the active learners, and feeling relatively safe from consequences, attempt to learn about human interaction by doing those exact things they are not permitted to do in real life, to experience -safely- the consequences in exquisite detail. It's a release, because we are still biologically animals, and on the grand time-line of evolution, only just barely civilized. It must be a struggle day-to-day for us to keep it all in because it explodes on the pages so readily.
Ok so just for fun, back to the "two types", for you pedantic sorts, there of course are many shades of those types, and perhaps they are modes, and not types, or proclivities instead, but I used types because it makes things simpler but of course we all experience times of active learning and passive learning, and perhaps there is a preferred mode of learning for people which would typify them, but here my point begins to dissolve in such minutia. Of course, you active-learner "types" will be happy to jump on any miniscule part of what I have said here, take an opposing stand, and enjoy the ride from there, but well hey, thanks for reading this far. I, for one, have learned from it. :)
P.s. to the commenter to asked if passive learning is a contradiction in terms, perhaps you would prefer to call it interactive vs. non-interactive learning, where I imagine passive learning to be where one consciously listens or observes with focus and intent to learn, and learns, without interacting physically.
Of course those that skew my intent merely to have their say are trying to learn about negative social interactions, so you may proceed.
Others, and we will recognize you by your thoughtful discourse, we welcome your input.
Sent from my ENIAC
This is good news, and not because of the politics of News Corp. If this had been 'successful' you would be seeing a /lot/ more companies charging for online content. As anyone who has ever subscribed to a magazine, paid for a newspaper or bought cable knows, paying for your media doesn't save you from advertising.
The news has become a commodity, and with media sites outsourcing most of their work with Reuters and the Associated Press they have also outsourced their identity. Frankly for most people it doesn't matter whether they get their news from Toledo or Seattle because it's all the same news.
I've said before and I'll say again that there are two ways for a media site to succeed on the Internet. Two rules - eight words.
1. Your user experience matters.
2. Create relevant quality content.
If you obey those two rules you can and will do well online. Look at the Wall Street Journal, they charge for a lot of their content and still make money, why? The user experience isn't user hostile and the experience of using their web site is fairly pleasant. They also create unique content through their own journalism with quality stories. The New York Time is in a similar situation.
By following these two simple adages they make a lot of money compared to their competitors. One of these publications leans left politically, the other leans right and yet they both succeed where others fall flat.
Two rules - eight words.
1. Your user experience matters.
2. Create relevant quality content.
If you obey those two rules you can and will do well online. Look at the Wall Street Journal, they charge for a lot of their content and still make money, why? The user experience isn't user hostile and the experience of using their web site is fairly pleasant.
No people pay for the Wall Street Journal over the daily because of the *unique* content it offers. You can get news about Britney/Bieber lovechild [High School Gossip] anywhere; Wall street journal is about money and investing. "Pretty and Experience" bullshit is part of the reason it failed.
Twice nothing is still nothing.
Absolutely but wasn't nothing they had 100,000 subscribers. The maths is surprisingly simple Revenue - COS = Gross Profit. The reality is they didn't make a Profit, the bottom line is they would have made less of a loss. :).
I'm sorry if you think your point excludes all others...It doesn't. Ironically having looked at the figures, I think your point is not as strong as you think it is.
I have to devote my full attention to understand what's said in videos thanks to audio processing disorder, and few news videos include captions/subtitles... I wouldn't mind as much if they were just as informative as reading, but it takes most 5-10 minutes to cover as much as a reasonably short paragraph, making it a huge waste of my time & energy.
Now mostly at Usenet:comp.misc & SoylentNews.org (it's made of people!)
....the "nothingofvaluewaslost" tag?
C'mon guys!
Mastering the English language is fucking easy: all you have to do is to put an f* word in every fucking sentence.
I tried out this app when it first came out, and after a couple of weeks, I deleted it. The problem wasn't the multimedia experience (which people are claiming has something to do with it). The problem was there was basically no news being reported. It was nothing but sports and politics (that masqueraded as news). What I found is that I could get my actual "news" from so many different sources. I'd have no problem paying for a service if it actually gave me something useful, but this was one of the most useless "news" sources I've ever subscribed to.
Sarbonn's blog: http://www.sarbonn.com/blog
Like other historical tyrants (Hitler, Mussolini, etc., throughout history), he never was satisfied with what he had, & never understood that the more you conquer and try to control others, that it is all just temporary. The problem becomes maintaining control of thier created 'empire'. They self-destruct, losing that control. Power is fleeting. And most all historical figures who sought it ultimately lost it all, and died unhappily. It's only those that realize that not ruling with an iron fist is the key to true success.
I look askance at people who look askance at people.
Sent from my ENIAC