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BREAKING NEWS & VIEWS
Tablet Time-Shift: iPad Leading ‘Jailbreak’ from Desktop MediaMonday, February 7, 2011 The tablet device may become the DVR of digital content, and it may have just as profound an effect on print and online content as that groundbreaking time-shift tool had on TV viewing and programming. According to content sharing and saving tools maker ReadItLater, people are getting in the habit of saving content during the workday to peruse in the evenings on their iPad. Mobile devices, both tablets and smartphones, seem to have become time-shifting tools for people overwhelmed by new information during the day. Charting 100 million articles saved across its available platforms (Web, iPhone, iPad), the company found that, not surprisingly, users of ReadItLater were encountering new content throughout the day and saving it for later reference. But for users of the company’s programs on computer, retrieving this saved information tended to occur also fairly evenly throughout the day, with surges at midday and in the evening. On the iPhone, article reading spiked in the morning (6 a.m. to 10 a.m.) and then peaked noticeably beginning at 5 p.m. and through 11 p.m. The iPhone reading habits seemed to circle around breakfast/commute and then end-of-day commute and again in prime time. .png) The iPad, on the other hand, was all about prime time. The overwhelming majority of reading was occurring between 7 p.m. and 11 p.m. In fact, ownership of an iPad seems to influence reading habits across other platforms. When it comes to reading saved content on their computer during the day, iPad owners are reading at a much lower rate than non-iPad owners throughout the day, with a spike in PC-based reading only at midday. In other words, according to ReadItLater’s stats, the iPad is not only replacing the computer in prime time as a primary digital reading source, it may well be decreasing consumption of articles during the day. Knowing that they have a more comfortable lean-back mode in which to consume content, iPad owners appear to be using it as a DVR for online content.  The implications of this research for publishers could be profound. “It’s the iPad leading the jailbreak from consuming content in our desk chairs,” says ReadItLater in a blog post. When given a choice, people seem to prefer reading digital media on their remote devices, especially the iPad. For publishers, this should inform their cross-platform strategies. While early iPad magazine apps emphasized saving and sharing articles within the iPad, it may be worthwhile to design Web sites and apps from the same brand so that content can be pushed more easily from online to mobile devices. This is a radical shift from just a few years ago when mobile screens were the least comfortable place for content-munching. Then, people often used their phones for content triage, browsing headlines and lead graphs and emailing the articles to themselves for later reading on the desk screen. Now, the polarity is starting to shift. Publishers will need to adjust by creating online tools and apps that follow the user’s content consumption path off the desktop. If you have breaking news to share please contact Steve Smith at ssmith@accessintel.com
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just a minor nitpick. the time-shifting tv show revolution has been going on for 3 decades. you were afraid readers wouldn't know what a VCR was? your parents had a VCR before you had a DVR.
Posted by DyNama on Monday, February 7, 2011 @ 02:23 PM
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