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Google gets in the subscription game, announces ‘One Pass’ for publishers
By Chris Hogg
In a blog post today, Google announced it is rolling out Google One Pass, a subscription service designed to let publishers set prices to access digital content.
Google One Pass offers publishers a variety of subscription options, including auto-renewing subscriptions, day passes, metered access, pay-per-article or multi-issue packages.
Using a single sign-on, a reader can access content on multiple platforms, including Web and mobile, without having to subscribe to multiple feeds. It’s a “purchase-once, view-anywhere solution,” Google says.
“With Google One Pass, publishers can customize how and when they charge for content while experimenting with different models to see what works best for them — offering subscriptions, metered access, ‘freemium’ content or even single articles for sale from their websites or mobile apps,” writes Lee Shirani, director, business product management, Google Commerce. “The service also lets publishers give existing print subscribers free (or discounted) access to digital content. We take care of the rest, including payments technology handled via Google Checkout.”
The roll-out of Google One Pass comes one day after Apple announced a subscription model for iOS devices. As the Financial Times reports, Google will take a 10 percent cut of any revenue from One Pass, compared to Apple’s 30 percent take on subscriptions sold for iOS devices.
Google’s Eric Schmidt announced Google One Pass at Humboldt University in Berlin today. The company says its goal is to provide an open and flexible platform to support publishers and journalism.
The first partners include German publishers Axel Springer AG, Focus Online (Tomorrow Focus), Stern.de, Media General, NouvelObs, Bonnier’s Popular Science, Prisa and Rust Communications.
Google One Pass is currently available in the United States, Canada, France, Italy, Germany, Spain and the United Kingdom. The company plans to expand to other geographies in the coming months.
The Google One Pass FAQ can be found here, and the company posted the following overview video for the product:
Apple officially rolls out App Store subscription service for publishers
By Chris Hogg
Apple confirmed Tuesday a new subscription service is now available to all publishers who have content-based apps on the App Store. The subscription service will allow newspapers, magazines, video and music publishers to charge a recurring fee.
The subscription model was first announced when Apple and News Corp. announced the iPad-only publication called The Daily. Then, Eddy Cue, vice president of Internet Services for Apple, said the subscription service was being launched with The Daily but other publishers would be able to use the feature eventually. Today, Apple confirmed the availability of the subscription service for all publishers. Apple said the service will use the same App Store billing system used for in-app purchases and publishers will be able to set the price and length of subscription.
Subscriptions can be offered on a weekly, monthly, bi-monthly, quarterly, bi-yearly or yearly basis. When users download an app using the new subscription service, they will be prompted to pick the length of subscription and are billed accordingly. Subscriptions can be reviewed an managed from an account page, including the ability to cancel a subscription that is set to auto-renew.
As for revenue-split, Apple says it will process all payments and keep a 30 percent share of revenue, which is the same percentage the company takes for other in-app purchases.
“Our philosophy is simple,” said Apple CEO Steve Jobs in a news release. “When Apple brings a new subscriber to the app, Apple earns a 30 percent share; when the publisher brings an existing or new subscriber to the app, the publisher keeps 100 percent and Apple earns nothing. All we require is that, if a publisher is making a subscription offer outside of the app, the same (or better) offer be made inside the app, so that customers can easily subscribe with one-click right in the app.”
Apple says publishers can offer subscriptions via their website and choose their own pricing and because Apple does not manage these transactions, the company will not take a revenue share and no customer information is shared with Apple. In this case, Apple says a publisher will need to authenticate a user using their own process.
However, Apple’s publisher guidelines say a publisher who sells a digital subscription outside of an app will have to offer the same subscription at the same price or less within apps. Apple’s terms also say a publisher cannot include links within an app to encourage users to purchase subscriptions outside of the app.
“We believe that this innovative subscription service will provide publishers with a brand new opportunity to expand digital access to their content onto the iPad, iPod touch and iPhone, delighting both new and existing subscribers,” Jobs said.
While Apple’s launch of a subscription model is being widely discussed in media circles for its potential to generate a new revenue stream, it remains to be seen if readers are willing to fork over cash to access content in apps when a lot of content is available freely on the Internet.
“[This year] is the year of media subscriptions,” said Larry Dignan with ZDNet. “The rub is we don’t know whether consumers will go along for the ride. It’s quite possible that 2011 will merely be the year of trying to do media subscriptions.”
Apple says customer privacy will be protected and users will be prompted with an option to share their name, email and zip code with a publisher when they subscribe. When a user shares information, personal info will be governed by a publisher’s privacy policy and not Apple’s, the company says.
Apple has sold more than 15 million iPads the company says iPad customers are huge consumers of news, downloading more than 200 million news apps to date.
Yahoo announces digital newsstand for tablets and mobile
By Chris Hogg
Publishers seek to extend their reach with new technologies, and Yahoo has announced it is also getting in the game with the launch of Livestand, a digital newsstand designed for tablets and smartphones.
In an announcement made Thursday, Yahoo said Livestand will offer a steady stream of new content to consumers based on their interests. Livestand will be designed specifically for new tablets and mobile phones so articles, images, video and ads are optimized for the screen.
“Adoption of tablets and mobile phones is exploding, and digital media isn’t keeping up,” Blake Irving, executive vice president and chief product officer for Yahoo, said in a news release. “Consumers can’t find the publications they buy off the newsstand, and publishers and advertisers can’t reach the audiences they want to serve. We’re in a position to meet all of these needs. Livestand is an immersive environment that provides a dynamic and personalized experience for consumers, and a pipeline of fresh and active content for publishers and advertisers.”
Yahoo says content will be published from its vast content library, including Sports, News, Finance, Flickr, omg!, and the Yahoo Contributor Network.
“Livestand from Yahoo leverages Yahoo’s strengths in content and personalization and re-imagines them into a new kind of experience for the rapidly growing tablet and mobile phone categories,” a company press release touts.
Yahoo’s move to mobile and tablets comes on the heels its of research that showed 86 percent of people use mobile devices while watching TV. By bringing content to mobile and tablets, Yahoo hopes to capitalize on this expanding audience.
Yahoo says Livestand is designed to help people cut through the noise on the Web by personalizing content. Users can select content from specific sources and and factors such as time of day, location and a user’s personal interests will also be taken into consideration when content is published.
Speculation about a personalized news mobile experience surfaced earlier this week, as Yahoo already shows different content to visitors to Yahoo’s home page depending on what the company knows about their interests.
From a design perspective, Livestand promises to offer touch interaction, a sleek design and a “singular focus on content.” The platform will also leverage social interactions. From an advertising standpoint, the digital newsstand will offer targeting capabilities to specific devices and offer an interactive canvas that “brings magazine-style ads to the tablet.”
Livestand will be available for iPad and Android tablets in the first half of this year and mobile phones and browser experiences will follow after.
Why an Austrian male editorial cartoonist pretended to be a woman
In Austria, the journalism community is buzzing over Rachel Gold. She draws editorial cartoons for the national Wiener Zeitung and Tiroler Tageszeitung newspapers. But what’s remarkable about Rachel is not her cartooning but her identity – she isn’t real, but instead the creation of cartoonist Markus Szyzkowitz.
As MSNBC’s Cartoon Blog explains, “Rachel got a job, and a paycheck, as a cartoonist at the Wiener Zeitung, replacing Markus, who was forced to leave his editorial cartooning job under pressure from his editor, because his cartoons had offended a politician who would later become Austria’s chancellor.”
So why did Markus create her? Her cartoons tended to more left-leaning and biting than Markus feels he can get away with, and her gender also played a role: editors find female cartoonist to be a rare bunch, since male cartoonists seem to dominate the editorial pages. Their voices might be heard more in the niche industry.
Markus also told MSNBC Rachel might be a favourite because he made her to be Jewish. Austria’s harsh history might encourage executives to be open-minded to Jewish staffers, Markus believes.
When Markus/Rachel began working at Kronen Zeitung, he began arousing suspicion. His editor hired an off-duty policeman to tail him and eventually the gig was up. Markus was fired, and now works at Wiener Zeitung and Tiroler Tageszeitung.
MSNBC reports Rachel’s identity, although not a secret, “isn’t known outside of a small community of Austrian cartoonists and journalists. Readers have no idea that Rachel is actually Markus.”