Has the best News app arrived yet ?

written by aditya - View Comments

Ever since the launch of iPad in March 2010, it has redefined the way people consume information. A trend that started with the iPad is now being carried forward by other tablets that have entered the game, including the very recent Kindle Fire. How big is the tablet market ? Has the surge of tablets impacted consumption of News ? What are the different News apps out there and how do they stack up against each other ? What can be expected of News apps in the future ? We attempt to answer some of these questions here.

The iPad, which leads the tablet space by a huge margin, has already sold over 35 million tablets – and that is excluding the numbers for the December quarter of 2011. Kindle Fire too has sold over 3 million since its release. The other Android tablets are yet to catch up. A conservative estimate of all the tablets shipped till date falls anywhere between 40 and 45 million. What’s more important is the pace at which this market is growing. Estimates suggest that iPad alone will sell close to 68 million units in the year 2012. This number is expected to be around 138 million in the year 2015, out of the 294 million tablets expected to sell that year as per Gartner’s report . Clearly, this is a market that Media houses, Developers and Marketers cannot overlook.

But, what are these 40 million users doing with their tablets ? A recent study by conducted by Pew Research Center, in collaboration with The Economist Group, throws light on the media consumption patterns on tablets. News consumption very nearly equals Email as the activity of choice on the tablet. Close to 53 % users get news on their tablet every day (54 % for email). And 77 %, or 30 million users get news on their tablets atleast once a week (“News Users”).

These numbers give news companies a lot to cheer about. Big media companies and a bunch of startups are all competing with each other to bring these users to their news apps or sites. Close to two thirds of the tablet news users, that is 20 million users, already have one to three news apps installed on their tablets. While tablet news is a trend that is here to stay, the details deserve a look.

Though tablets are replacing PCs as a medium to access news, the browser still remains the more popular means of consuming news. Only 21% (6.3 million) of the tablet news users prefer apps over the browser to access news. And, even here, preference remains deeply rooted for apps published by News companies rather than aggregators.

Now for the big question : Why is the mindshare of aggregator news apps so abysmal ? What should aggregator news apps do to improve this ?

Before we attempt to answer this question, let’s take a look at the current set of aggregator news apps in the market and where they fall short. The ecosystem of aggregator news apps can be broadly classified into two : Personalization driven and Discovery driven.

Personalization driven : These apps allow the readers to consume the content of one or more web sources. A list of web sources is made available by the app and readers can choose the ones they prefer to view from within the app – hence the word personalization. Readers can also view their Twitter and Facebook streams from within the app. There is little or no curation of content. The mainstay of such apps is their usability. The list below shows Macworld’s ratings for a few such apps.

Discovery driven : These apps provide readers with channels of curated articles for various topics. Very often, these articles are drawn from sources that readers might not be aware of. The channels and articles there in are curated based on the choice of topics by the reader. The readers usually cannot change content sources within a channel. the list below shows Macworld’s ratings for a few such apps.

While a detailed review of all the above apps is out of the scope of this article, there are a few important things to note.

Most common features :

Here are some features you might find as a part of every app (barring a few exceptions)..

• Content Aggregation : Content from multiple sources, either given to the user as clusters or as individual feeds.
• Social feed integration : Facebook and Twitter can be accessed from within the app.
• Basic customization : Subscribe new content sources or to new channels.
• Share content : Articles can be shared through Twitter, Facebook or Email

Differentiation factors :

Here are features that apps try to differentiate on..

• User Experience : Flipboard sets the standards here. Publishers craft their pages as per Flipboard’s needs.
• Layout customization : Readers can alter the look and feel as per their needs. The options could include number of columns, simple list view or summary of each article etc.
• Breadth of content sources : YourVersion HD is the only app that integrates Quora. Flipboard now gives Instagram as one of the options.
• Interest based curation : The interests of the reader can be mined from his Facebook or twitter profiles, from the articles he reads or from giving a thumbs up or thumbs down on specific articles. Zite allows readers to request more content from a particular source or more on a particular topic.

The short falls :

Here is a list of what you might not like about some of these apps (as per this and this)..

• Pulp : The app does not provide an option to view your twitter and Facebook feeds.
• Taptu : The home page appears crammed, with 56 visual elements vying for your attention.
• News.me : This app is essentially a paid twitter reader with no other feeds available.
• Trove : The app provides an inconsistent reading experience because of the in-app browser.
• Flud : The app forces feeds into categories. The user interface is non-intuitive.
• Hitpad : Content is presented based on trending stories, making particular topics hard to find.

The leader board :

Not all apps are created equal. Two apps, in particular, have caught the attention of readers – Flipboard and Zite. Flipboard has been downloaded over 4.5 million times. Here is how they compare :

And now for the wish list :

So, there is a glut of apps, some fall short of expectations and some do better, but the browser and apps made by news companies remain the go-to destinations when it comes to consuming news on tablets. It’s now time to think about what a highly engaging aggregator app should provide, if we wish to reverse the above trend. Beyond the common features, here is what I think these apps should wow us on. Though this is my personal wish list, I am fairly sure that a large set of readers will vote for this.

• UI : The UI has to be extremely intuitive, simple and elegant without being loud and in the face. Anything that takes the attention away from reading is a no-no. There should be consistency in how every article opens inside the app. A case where some articles open in a reader and some in a browser is clearly despicable. The UI should also allow for few minor customizations, like font, text colour, number of columns, list and summary view etc.
• Customization : I prefer subscribing to topics and allowing the app to choose the best available content sources for each topic. That said, I should be able to add or remove specific sources under each topic at my will. This will help me discover interesting content from sources that were previously not known to me. It also means that the app should provide a sizeable list of content sources on various topics to cater to my manual addition needs.
• Interest learning : The initial set of topics relevant to me can be bootstrapped by mining my Twitter, Facebook or Google Plus profiles. This can be particularly useful if I am a heavy user of any of these and it can save me significant time in customizing the app.
  
  The app should continuously learn about my interests – both implicitly and explicitly – and give me better content. Implicit learning should be gathered from the kind of articles I open, the amount of time I spend reading these articles, the sentiment expressed in comments and so on. Explicit learning can be gathered when I give a thumbs up/ thumbs down on articles, ask for more content on particular topics and so on. Instant gratification is extremely important when I provide explicit feedback. I need to know what the system has learnt about me with each input I give, else I might not be motivated to continue giving information. As an example : If I give a thumbs up on an article, the app should tell me : ”We learn that you like these topics : ….”.
  
  Apps are still silos when compared to the browser. The browser, with its support for cross linking, helps us enjoy the web in all its glory. If an app needs to challenge this, it should learn all my interests over time and bring into the app all the information I might want to read about, highlight all the links that might interest me and bring in the target pages into the app as well – in short, the app should be “THE” place for all the news I need, never having to look elsewhere for anything. Thanks to “App fatigue”, I have now lost the will to go to multiple apps for the news I need.
• Social feel : The usage of social profiles in apps today is mainly restricted to providing access to these feeds from the app, allowing readers to share articles over these networks and in the more advanced apps like Zite, mine out interests to tailor content.
  
  But the consumption of content still lacks the social feel. What I mean by this is that the app should match readers interests and suggest people with similar interests with whom I can share articles. Sharing an article with my entire network means adding a lot of noise to the system – an article that is relevant for a few might be spam for many. The app should also provide an interface where I can access all the articles that have been shared with me.
  
  Commenting lacks personality. I should be able to view opinions and insights about every article under the title “What your friends just said..” rather than just “Comments”. This implies that these inputs should be coming from those whom I know.

Let’s hope that app developers sit up and take notice. Let’s hope that apps truly take us beyond the browser experience. Let’s hope I do not have to open 8 apps to get to all the information I need. Let’s hope serendipity prevails.