Comments on: There's a newspaper in my iPhone http://rlr.blogsome.com/2009/04/17/theres-a-newspaper-in-my-iphone/ We're ALL Rich Rosen, but some of us are more Rich Rosen than others... Thu, 17 Dec 2009 09:20:11 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=1.5.1-alpha by: chris http://rlr.blogsome.com/2009/04/17/theres-a-newspaper-in-my-iphone/#comment-101 Sun, 21 Jun 2009 23:05:36 +0100 http://rlr.blogsome.com/2009/04/17/theres-a-newspaper-in-my-iphone/#comment-101 hi. i'm a software product manager. I came across your blog article because I wanted to see if anyone else's nytimes app is crashing when they try to edit their toolbar (on my iTouch). no luck there so far :( In response to your article: I agree with your implicit point which I think is: competing providers of news should innovate by differentiating themselves from their competitors. However, I would argue that the user interface within the iPhone app is not a key point of differentiation between the nytimes and wsj. The WSJ obviously didn't burn alot of creative oil to design their app, but perhaps that was strategic. Perhaps they just wanted to copy nytimes and provide a good-enough interface. The true differentiator between the nytimes and wsj is the content. I can't read OpEds from Thomas Friedman on the WSJ for example, and if I wanted a more detailed analysis of the markets, I might prefer WSJ. Thankfully both of them are "free". Actually, they're not free - you're paying for them by reading advertisments. Perhaps this might be where the two battle. NYtimes seems to only run house ads. As the newspapers cringe to find revenue sources, let's see how far they go in pillaging their iPhone app experiences with paid advertising... hi. i'm a software product manager. I came across your blog article because I wanted to see if anyone else's nytimes app is crashing when they try to edit their toolbar (on my iTouch). no luck there so far :( In response to your article: I agree with your implicit point which I think is: competing providers of news should innovate by differentiating themselves from their competitors. However, I would argue that the user interface within the iPhone app is not a key point of differentiation between the nytimes and wsj. The WSJ obviously didn't burn alot of creative oil to design their app, but perhaps that was strategic. Perhaps they just wanted to copy nytimes and provide a good-enough interface. The true differentiator between the nytimes and wsj is the content. I can't read OpEds from Thomas Friedman on the WSJ for example, and if I wanted a more detailed analysis of the markets, I might prefer WSJ.

Thankfully both of them are "free". Actually, they're not free - you're paying for them by reading advertisments. Perhaps this might be where the two battle. NYtimes seems to only run house ads. As the newspapers cringe to find revenue sources, let's see how far they go in pillaging their iPhone app experiences with paid advertising...

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