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BREAKING NEWS & VIEWS
Lurching Towards an iPhone Magazine People magazine’s iPhone app appears to be a major hit, as it remains high on the App Store’s bestseller list weeks after its release. In many ways, People was tailor-made for mobile. It has a persistent and rich feed of Web stories about celebrities and images that fit the mobile model of drive-by content snaking. Of course, an image-driven magazine also conforms to the iPhone's  portrait orientation. Arguably, an iPhone or G1 Android smart phone is a better form for magazines than the Web display. The editors can superimpose rich captions on the photo galleries so they can convey considerable visual and textual information on a single screen. People’s celebrity news organization keeps the news and image pipelines well refreshed.But what do we make of other magazines that are just lush rather than timely? Should they forsake mobile media altogether? Two regional and localized magazine titles have appeared recently in mobile versions, and they give us some clue about how magazine facsimiles may or may not work on mobile. The Los Angeles Cliché magazine is a fashion-forward, image laden book that has created an ambitious multi-platform outreach into Twitter, Facebook, MySpace and now the iPhone. Users download an app that in turn downloads and views miniature versions of Cliché. The end result is not as bad as one would think, and it suggests there may be some role for digital magazine versions on mobile. Like many fashion magazines, Cliché is stuffed with full page apparel ads that are large enough to work well in the portrait format of the iPhone. An animated page flip gives the experience a print-like feel unavailable on the Web. Likewise, full page ads fill the miniaturized field of view that the iPhone screen represents. Unlike the Web, where clutter is everywhere, even in slideshows, mobile content out of necessity fills the screen. The reader software behind the Cliché experience activates a zoom view when any area of the page is pressed, so the user can zoom and pan simply by depressing the finger and sliding it around the screen. This virtualizes a natural pan and scan reading mode. The Cliché mobile reading model actually would work very well with digitized print media in which visuals play a key role, especially in design, fashion and photography titles. Unfortunately, Cliché’s iPhone app recreated the print experience nicely but leaves out too many digital necessities: namely, hot links, section jumping, and article sharing. Nevertheless, the app does let users download and store individual issues and picks up browsing where a user left off. Even magazine brands that adopt a more mobile-centric approach like People’s might consider offering mobile readers a portable library of facsimiles of print issues. It would be a good value add, and the next-gen smart phones are capable of recreating the page flipping behaviors nicely. Another local book that works in multiple regions, 944 magazine, has a curious mobile application that combines three media models. The app offers versions that are specific to nine regions  (Miami, San Francisco, Phoenix, et. al). The home screen re-purposes the 944 Twitter feed. The notes from editors feel very timely and personal. A digital version of the most recent issue is also part of the mix, although this is literally a scanned version of the print book. Two-page features and ad spreads are cut in two by the form factor of the iPhone. In this case, recreating the magazine on the phone is as bad as one would expect. The bright spot is the localized recommendations. 944 has a well-designed directory of local hot spots with images, links to their Web site and tools for sharing and saving. This feature should remind magazine publishers that mobile gives them the opportunity to be of service on a local level. Mobile also puts multimedia tools in the user’s hands. The 944 app also lets users take their own shots from these hot spots and upload them directly to the magazine for inclusion in the mobile photo gallery. While less polished and compelling than People, USAToday, WSJ or other print brands on mobile, both Cliché and 944 are playing with the idea of porting magazines to this platform in interesting ways. Cliché shows how the look and feel of magazine browsing actually can work on the phone. And 944 leverages both locale and multimedia making to combine the traditional print product with mobile media’s most essential quality, mobility. As a new medium struggles to mature and developers play with a range of new forms, sometimes the near-misses are as interesting as the successes. If you have breaking news to share please contact Steve Smith at ssmith@accessintel.com COMMENTS
1.
I'm interested to see how others look at the pan and scan reading mode. I was scared it would be too different from the pinch to zoom model, but I think you've summarized my intentions quite clearly :)
Posted by Dimitri Bouniol on Wednesday, July 1, 2009 @ 05:45 AM
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