Tuesday, July 3, 2012

New partnerships try subscription paywalls & advertising


News reading apps last week announced new partnerships with publishers: Pulse with Wall Street Journal and Flipboard with The New York Times, Gigaom reported.

Pulse, founded in May 2010, creates an interactive mosaic by integrating the user's favourite websites and is available for iPad, iPhone, Android, Kindle Fire and Nook. 

Pulse launched a new tab called "Premium Sources" that will allow readers have access to specific news channels from the Wall Street Journal, owned by News Corp.: Water Cooler (US$.99/month), Political Report ($3.99/month) and Technology Digest ($3.99/month), according to a post from the site

The subscription revenue will be shared among Pulse, News Corp., and Apple, which takes a 30 percent cut of any revenue coming from its apps.

"What we have tried to do with these publishers is align ourselves with their goals (paid content)," said Akshay Kothari, co-founder of Pulse, according to Bloomberg. "Some want to increase page views, some want to increase the number of paid subscriptions."

Meanwhile, the app Flipboard is betting on an advertising model. The New York Times subscribers will read articles, view videos and blog posts directly through Flipboard's app on any mobile device. Non-subscribers can also access a free sampling of articles from the Top News section of The Times. It is the first time that the NYT has allowed full access to the news content through a third party, blog Bits from the NYT reported

The revenues will be split between the app and The Times. Full-screen ads will appear between Flipboard pages.

"This move was part of a broader strategy to expand the reach of Times content, including to third-party digital products," said Denise F. Warren, general manager of The Times's website.

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