But Wait, There’s More….

How much more? Check out our new video about our GoMobile plan to see how many devices Nxtbook supports.

 

Glenn Beck Draws the Crowd, You Reach the Audience

Glenn Beck’s rally at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. on Friday drew a crowd of tens of thousands of people. Protestors, supporters and gawkers alike came from all over to be a part of the action.

Wouldn’t it be great to have crowds like that become your readers?

Nxtbook Media client Destination DC had just that chance. And they didn’t have to spend a dime to get it.

Destination DC produces an Official Visitor’s Guide to the Washington, D.C. area. (Click here to see the most recent edition.) Having a digital edition meant when rally enthusiasts started planning their trip on internet platforms, they could promote and share the Visitor’s Guide with each other. For example, the guide’s link was posted on the Caldwell Tea Party’s website as a resource for the area (click here to see). Another reader posted the guide’s link to two freepublic chat sites (click here and here).

Going digital meant the Visitor’s Guide could not only be used immediately to respond to current events, but it could also reach an audience Destination DC didn’t even consider targeting. Best of all, Destination DC didn’t have to do a thing for this free advertising; their readers did all the work for them.

That’s a big plus one for the "going digital" category!

Nxtbook Native App in Action

As my co-writer, Joy, told you last week, the Nxtbook Newsstand App is live in the iTunes store and ready for download. But if you’re on your computer and want want to see it in action, just click on the video below:

 

To learn more, why not join us for a special webinar: How’s your APP-etite? This one takes place Wednesday, September 15th from 2-3 and will look at the various app options available. Click here to join the webinar.

Just the Stats, Maam.

Random facts and figures from Nxtbook tracking – all from the past 30 days of activity:

*Average time spent in a Nxtbook: 7 minutes, 4 seconds. How’s that compare to your website?
*Average bounce rate: A ridiculously low 2.74%. When people go into a digital edition, they plan on staying.
*Traffic via email: Hanging steady at just 37%. If you’re only thinking about e-mail open rate, you’re missing the boat!
*Out of the 16,000 websites that drove traffic to Nxtbooks, which one ranked #5? Facebook. (Twitter just missed the top 10%, at 169.)
*Are Google links more relevant than Yahoo or Bing? Vistors to Nxtbooks via Google stay more than twice as long as the other two top search engines.

The Man Behind the WIRED App

Here’s a very interesting profile on Scott Dadich, the man behind the design of the WIRED app. To be fair, it’s a bit over the top (one quote refers to him as "some sort of combination of Jesus and Pele," whatever that means), but it’s an interesting read.

For my money, my favorite quote wasn’t about Dadich, but about digital magazines, and was given by Mr. LongTail-FREE Chris Anderson, who said:

"You’re talking about finding a way to make digital magazines in parallel with printed magazines without going crazy… There are so many moving pieces with digital magazines. There are thousands of individual elements with portraits and landscapes and interactive elements and all that. You need to think like a spreadsheet to ensure that you get the product out the door." 

I honestly don’t know if you need an app with that.

For the past few years, we’ve been relatively anti-native app, feeling that the web app offers more benefits than the native app option. But, giving way to pressure, we’ve added the native app to the GoMobile plan.

Will it matter? I dunno. A recent commenter on our youtube video about our web app was aghast that we didn’t have a native app (we didn’t when the video was shot), yet this detailed reviewer of WIRED’s app doesn’t feel he needs an app. Who’s right? Quite frankly, I don’t know, but here’s the good news: We are one of the few digital publishers to give our customers both, with detailed metrics cooked into all versions. Within months, we’ll finally know which option is best for you.

The Web is (Un)Dead: Just Another Vampire Story

Yesterday I read the shocking news that someone has killed the Web. What was more, people were debating whether users killed it, or if corporations and media moguls were to blame.

The crux of the argument, however, depended upon what is arguably a very misleading graph:

http://www.wired.com/magazine/2010/08/ff_webrip/

At first glance, it’s easy to see where Chris Anderson and Michael Wolff of Wired concluded that the Web is headed for the grave. Truly, it looks like the Web peaked in 2000 and has fallen downhill ever since.

The key is to note this is a share graph, not a traffic graph. What this image actually conveys is in proportion to the total traffic between 2000 and 2010, more internet users were found using peer-to-peer, video, and other platforms. It does not show the actual number of users to use any particular platform.

Because in reality, the total number of Internet users has increased drastically during this same ten year time frame. Rob Beschizza points out in his article on the topic, "According to Cisco, the same source Wired used for its projections, total internet traffic rose then from 1 exabyte to 7 exabytes between 2005 and 2010."

http://www.boingboing.net/2010/08/17/is-the-web-really-de.html

Cisco also projects that global Internet traffic will quadruple by 2014. Such stats denote a very un-dead Web.

So what is the graph really saying?

Proportionally, Internet users are changing how they approach the Web. Though traffic is increasing exponentially, visitors are using multiple platforms – Web browser, email, peer-to-peer, video and other – to get their information.

Publishers, your audience is fractured, and this trend isn’t about to change. To get content to readers, you need to have a plan to reach them across a broad spectrum of platforms. Including the Web.

I said I wasn’t going to write about this anymore.

After my last post complaining about nonsense surveys in regards to digital magazines, I vowed that would be my last word on the topic for a while. Unfortunately, as he often does, Seth Godin expressed my opinion better than I did. On his post, When Technology & Tradition Diverge, he writes:

When the secret ballot was introduced, it just wasn’t possible to count the votes in less than a few days. So a tradition was established, driven by the technology, not because it was the best way. Now, of course, the technology doesn’t need that tradition any longer, but it’s still here.

One by one, traditions that supported technology are falling as the technology changes.

Simply put, we no longer need surveys that ask people how they read. So why are we still doing them?

 

Next Issue Research Proves Need for Next Issue

In what can’t really be called a surprise, Next Issue Media has released a report that shows that people will pay for digital content, particularly if the content is more substantial than what can be found in print.

Though interesting, the report is largely one of speculation, as there really aren’t many products offering what the research claims people want. Moreover, the report failed to address the potential market for controlled circulation publications. But still, fun reading all in all.

One of the best parts may be a more realistic view of the tablet market, as covered here. It’s important to understand that tablets are merely one of many interesting ways people will be consuming content in the future.

 

Why a Lot of Digital Magazine Surveys Suck

I was interviewed at length about my frequent complaining about digital magazine studies like this one and this one that report what readers say they do compared to what they actually do.

Most dismaying, perhaps, is that the links I’ve provided aren’t to the studies but to the major news outlets who considered the data accurate enough to be published.

It’s interesting – we’re a Google advertiser and I get a lot of surveys from Google asking me about their service, with lots and lots of questions. But not one of these questions asks me things that Google already knows the answer to: they don’t ask about CTR, page views, etc. They do ask about what my experience is as an advertiser and those are good questions. But to ask about things that data can confirm (or, more likely, refute) in a heartbeat is just silly.

Disclaimer: the interviewer is Peter Houston, who works for a Nxtbook customer, though in point of fact I don’t think he ever personally chose to work with Nxtbook, though I do hope we make it easy to do so. 

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