Category Archives: Media

Why fewer publishers support Android

slide-5-1024

Slide from Benedict Evans presentation to Google’s ‘Mobile on the Go’ event

If you’re in the publishing business you have two options to reach mobile readers. You can publish direct to the web using HTML or you can build smartphone and tablet apps.

Both approaches allow you to charge for content and to publish advertising.

If you choose the app route, the next step is deciding which devices to support. That’s where it gets tricky.

You’d think raw numbers would decide matters. Yet while Android devices outsell Apple iOS gadgets by two to one, most publishers’ first choice is to build iOS apps.

That’s because Apple users buy stuff, Android users don’t. Or more accurately, Apple users spend so much more on buying apps and content compared with Android users.

It would be madness to adopt an Android-first strategy.

The decision to publish for Android is usually a distant second.

Martin Belam quotes Benedict Evans of Enders Analysis who explains the economics of this.

Most of the Android devices making up that huge market share are low cost phones or tablets. Often Android owners take whatever their phone company offers them in a deal. They don’t care about operating systems – they probably can’t tell you which OS their device is running and they probably barely use any of the functionality.

Only a fraction ever make it to the Google Play app store. If they do get there, they are more likely to choose free apps than paid ones.

Android users typically have a different, less intense relationship with their device than iOS users. This extends to the way they consume content.

Paul Spain adds digital podcast

Paul Spain of NZ Digital Podcast

Paul Spain of NZ Digital Podcast

NZ Tech Podcast producer and presenter Paul Spain has launched a new podcast which he says is for the “broader digital community”. That’s the people who use technology in areas like marketing, media, online publishing, social media and so on.

The idea is to reach a wider audience than the technology professionals and self-proclaimed geeks who listen to the weekly NZ Tech Podcast.

Although the target audience is, by definition, a keen consumer of media and well versed in creating content, there’s not much local programming aimed specifically at this niche.

I’m a fan of the podcast format – and a regular guest on the NZ Tech Podcast. Podcasts fill the same niche as talk radio – they are perfect for listing to on public transport or in the car.

NZ Digital Podcast

News media: Everything in decline but digital

A pessimistic view of America’s news media shows declining revenues leading to repeated cost-cutting has hurt readership and audience loyalty. Is anyone surprised by this?

New Zealand is a little behind the US on the trends shown in the story, but we’re catching up fast. Do you think the informal media, sites like mine but also those like Kiwiblog, Whaleoil and Scoop are filling the gap?

State Of The News Media: Everything In Decline But Digital.

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Subscriptions, not paywalls

Karen Fratti thinks publishers need to stop using the word ‘paywall’ to describe ways online sites charge readers. She prefers we talk about subscriptions.

Fratti writes:

 let’s stop talking about putting up walls to keep people out. The paywall has only led to griping from consumers who’ve reached their monthly article limit, and unique ways to get around them. We’re wordsmiths, we know words matter, and ‘paywall’ is another relic of the old media-new media debate. Knock it off.

I agree with Fratti on this, rightly or wrongly paywall makes me think of the watch towers and armed guard that patrolled central Berlin during the Cold War. The paywall is the new media’s equivalent of Cold War thinking.

Can’t We All Just Subscribe? Why ‘Paywalls’ Won’t Get Us Anywhere – 10,000 Words.

Dymocks exits ebook publishing after 15 months

Dymocks New Zealand

Dymocks New Zealand closed in 2012, now the company is retreating from ebooks

Australia’s BRW magazine reports Dymocks exits ebook publishing after 15 months. The company told BRW the program was a ‘innovative experiment’ but the challenges were too great.

Dymocks managing director Steve Cox told BRW:

“We learned a lot about that market and those customers but unfortunately the constraints of the platform and business model meant we couldn’t fulfil the vision”.

This story doesn’t make it clear if there’s something systematically wrong with ebook publishing or if the closure is part of Dymock’s winding-down. The company closed its New Zealand business in late 2012 and appears to be in retreat.

I’m interested to know if there’s a viable space in the ebook business for a quality operation sitting between the giant, global powerhouses and the niche publishers. What do you think?

Why I use WordPress.com not WordPress.org

Pieter Breugel - Landscape with the Fall of Icarus

Pieter Breugel – Landscape with the Fall of Icarus

WordPress is the top name for online publishing software. It comes in two similar, yet distinct, flavours. Both are free.

  • WordPress.com is the hosted version, the software is so simple you can have a basic site online within minutes of signing-up. Anyone can use WordPress.com, it requires little technical knowledge. Although WordPress.com offers thousands of design choices, there are restrictions. 
  • The software at WordPress.org is much the same. There are minor differences, but you have to find your own host which usually will cost you money. This gives you far more flexibility over the look of your site and the way it functions. There are thousands of plug-ins and themes – some free, some paid-for, to spruce-up your site.

The price you pay for more flexibility is complexity. While WordPress.org can be straightforward, it can quickly get technical. If you like, you can dig around in the code to your heart’s content.

My WordPress journey started with the free .com version. After a year I wanted more flexibility and moved to .org. I still run a few .org site, but this site has been back with .com for a little over a year.

WordPress.com is a better choice for my needs because it allows me to focus on what I’m writing and not the mechanics of running a website. 

What I gained moving back to WordPress.com

Time. Self-hosted WordPress gives you many opportunities to tinker with site design and functionality. I would spend hours each month tweaking – trying to make the site look better or work better.

That was great for learning more about WordPress. It wasn’t great for productivity. Now I spend that time on other matters, including writing more posts. That has paid off with higher traffic.

Reliable. WordPress.com hardly ever goes offline. In the past year I’ve seen just 85 minutes of downtime – some of that was scheduled. During my time with two New Zealand-based hosts I could see that amount of downtime in a single month.

uptime

Uptime measured over one year with WordPress.com

Compare those figures with those from the last twelve months of my self-hosted site.

Uptime measured over one year with a New Zealand web host

Uptime measured over one year with a New Zealand web host

Performance. WordPress.com is faster than any New Zealand web host I’ve used as this graph from Google Webmaster Tools shows:

Time spent downloading a page

Time spent downloading a page

Switching from self-hosted to WordPress.com saw the average page download speed drop from 2200 milliseconds to 400 milliseconds. I posted about this shortly after moving a year ago. Since then the average page speed has crept up to 600 milliseconds, some of that is because I now post more images. 

Money: Cost wasn’t my reason for switching back from self-hosting to WordPress.com. I paid around $160 a year for local hosting on a shared server, WordPress.com is free. You can’t argue with the price – the downside is WordPress sometimes inserts ads on my site. I expect to pay US$30 a year for the no-ads option in the next few months.

Last year I paid US$30 for the custom design add-on. This allows me to tweak designs and use different fonts. I played with it for a while, but decided not to use it because I was in danger of being dragged back into the WordPress tinkering black hole that sucks all life out of the universe.

I paid my NZ host around $30 a year for my domain name – I now pay US$13 to WordPress. Again my choice is about convenience not saving pennies.

Conclusion: Overall moving back to WordPress.com worked well for me. I may change back if circumstances change, but for now this is the best option: Faster, more reliable, less distracting and cheaper.

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