News apps and iPads

In honour of the iPad finally going on sale in New Zealand soon, and in anticipation of the NZ news apps we expect to see soon after, here’s a link to Josh Benton’s review of a few news iPad apps, which is worth a look. Here’s an excerpt:

Just about every news website created in the past 15 years has pushed users down a similar path: show them a whole bunch of headlines, arrayed into a variety of design styles, then expect the user to choose one of them and begin what the site hopes will be a lengthy run of clicking on stories. It’s a decision tree: Here are your options, now make a choice.

The very attractive BBC app takes a key step away from that pattern. When you launch the app, you’re not confronted just with a bunch of headlines — you’re also thrown immediately into the text of the app’s top story, without so much as a click. And once you’re reading one story, the act of flicking to another one seems closer to a default act than when you’ve just selected from a menu of options.

It’s a model that makes perfect sense from a broadcasting background; a BBC radio or TV show doesn’t wait to ask which story the listener wants first. It just dives right in. Considering how many news website users never get past that list of initial headlines, dumping the reader directly into a story might be a way to push browsers into readers. The BBC may not rely on in-app advertising to pay the bills, but for sites that do, it’s a model worth watching.

Then there’s Flipboard, an app that lets you browse your social media accounts in a magazine format. Here’s Robert Scoble talking to Flipboard founder Mike McCue.