links for 2009-05-29

• Connections – May 2009 – Page Survey
  (tags: test)
• Printed Circuit Design & Fab – January 2009
  Crazy Sponsorship with link to animation

Readership Numbers and Titles for May

The past 30 days have been huge for readership, with well over 1.6 million people reading a Nxtbook. (If you like pictures more than numbers, be sure to check out the map here.)

RE: the continuing coverage of digital magazine readership via Twitter and Facebook, here’s an update:

Readers from Facebook over the past 90 days are more than 26% greater than the 90 days before that. Facebook continues to drive digital magazine readership higher each month.

Twitter referrals over the same period are up a whopping 150%, but what continues to be cool about Twitter is the power of engagement. Readers via Twitter stay inside the digital magazine 44% longer — more than 3 minutes longer. In short, when people Tweet it, people believe it’s important.

Looking at our top titles over the past 30 days, there’s a healthy cross section. This dynamite custom digital-only magazine for Fidelity uses an optimized layout and customized toolbar to deliver a rich experience. Meanwhile GP2 from the Guitar Player people had awesome readership and used a slick intro video. Finally, Nurse.com made healthy use of the Nxtbook tab feature to direct readers where they wanted them, too. Three very different application of the Nxtbook, but all three cracked the Nxtbook Top 10 this month. Well done!

If You’re Not Bleeding, You’re Not Trying.

… and with those words (and an unusually high percentage of fast twitch muscle fibers) the Nxtbook Tricycle Team took 1st place at this year’s United Way Trike Race, held on the (thankfully closed) streets of downtown Lancaster.

While yesterday’s story in the local paper may have fueled the competetive fires of our opponents, it did little to prevent the crew from pretty much trouncing the other teams.

Though we all share in the victory, the true accolades go to the team:

   

 

 

Photos, courtesy of Chris "The Shutter" Shontz

Are You Going to Audience Development This Year?

That question is a teeny bit rhetorical as pre-registrations are (expectedly) down this year. Still, Nxtbook is thrilled to be a sponsor of this year’s event, the best of its kind for those in the circulation business.

If you are there, be sure to check out Nxtbook stars Eric Gervase & Beth Molloy as they deliver 7 Ways Digital Magazines are Changing Audience Development.

You’ll learn:

• Which social media tool brings you readers that stay 40% longer
• Which new digital magazine newsstand is open for business, regardless of what platform you’re using now
• How to grow your circulation on Kindles, iPhones, BlackBerries and more

Where: The Audience Development Conference, Chicago
When: Tuesday, June 9, 10:45 am

Usain Bolt Breaks World Record at Nxtbook Office…

OK, that’s a bit of an exaggeration, but you’ll have to forgive us for the hyperbole in honor of Manchester, our European Headquarters. Last week, we enjoyed watching one of our soccer (er, football) teams become Premier League Champions and now we’re witness to Usain Bolt shattering the 150m world record on the city streets. Quite the week in Manchester!

 

Does My Audience Care About Social Media?

We get that question a lot. When talking about things like Twitter, Digg and Social Media, we might hear, "Our audience is too old/male/young/female, etc." And while it is true that all of these things do factor a bit in participation, the most interesting (to me) about this tool is how they don’t vary all that much. Try it out for yourself or – better – yet, watch the report on the same subject. Good stuff.

Disclaimer: the tool didn’t work for me on a Mac w/ Firefox. I have no idea why.

How Social Are You?

The Telegraph is reporting 8% of their traffic comes from social media, which should be considered a very healthy number, indeed, though we’ve seen that the value of that traffic is affected dramatically by where it comes from. Twitter traffic, for instance, tends to be quite highly engaged with the content, in both terms of engagement time and click-through, whereas the Digg visitors tend to bump out rather quickly. That’s not always true, of course, and your mileage will vary, but either way, if you’re only thinking of e-mail when it comes to digital magazines, you’re missing a big (and growing) piece of the pie.

Upping the Interactive

There’s some Twitter-chat this week about SEED Magazine’s very cool interactive interface. In many ways, this is more of a website interface than a digital magazine interface, as the user controls what they see when and can’t really tell when they’re done looking. Those aren’t judgment calls, mind you, just facts. At any rate, we love different ways to visualize data and if you’re looking to drive engagement, you could do a lot worse.

Rules Are… There Are No Rules.

Even way back when, Kenickie was right. Rules can get in the way, which is why we cringe when people make blanket statements about anything, particularly digital magazines.

Perhaps this is why Andrew Lowsowsky’s article in the WSJ (which is all about magazines but doesn’t mention digital magazines) is so completely cool (like Kenickie).

If you were told to ship a t-shirt with a magazine, or charge $675 for a subscription or ship the issue in a can, you’d say that these things defy the rules of magazines as we know them.

But that’s exactly the point, as that’s what these publishers are doing. Great article, Andrew.

Times Reader Beta, I Mean Better…

The new version of the Times Reader was officially announced this week and – as expected – it’s no longer built with the stuff that became Microsoft Silverlight. Instead, it’s built with Adobe AIR, the same technology behind the offline Nxtbook. Though less than 10% of Nxtbook readers choose to read offline, if you’ve noticed the greatly improved performance, it’s due to the move to Adobe AIR several months ago.

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