Sports Illustrated Tries the Tablet
Sports Illustrated today unveiled a prototype of what its magazine would look like on a tablet computer. While it won’t be available to consumers until tablet computers are — presumably sometime next year — it’s an important move for the magazine industry. If magazines can charge for content on tablet computers, and give advertisers data on who’s seeing their ads, a lot of their problems could be solved.
Apple, Hewlett-Packard and other manufacturers are expected to release tablet computers next year. While it’s unclear exactly what they’ll look like, the general guess is they’ll be like big iPhones, with interactive touch-screens. The larger size makes it feasible to put a magazine page on a tablet.
S.I. is sending over a video later this afternoon that will demonstrate the tablet’s capabilities, but here are a few of them. It replicates the magazine on the tablet computer, letting readers flip through the pages as though it’s a print product. The functionality, though, lets readers interact with the magazine much more. They can rearrange the sections and stories to read in whatever order they like. They can watch videos and see additional pictures from photo shoots.
They can get live updates of sports scores from all the teams they follow, or create pages of teams or athletes that pulls live statistics. When a match is on that the reader is interested in, an alert can pop up, and provide a way for the reader to play along — guessing whether Serena Williams will double-fault, for instance. And there’s a little wheel-shaped toolbar that pops up with any picture, quote or story that allows the reader to print, e-mail, share on Facebook, see related Twitter posts, view comments, get more stories about the topic, save the text or photograph to a favorites file, and other tools.
The pages’ design derives from print, though. For instance, readers are not allowed to zoom in and zoom out on text, and must instead view it on a fixed page (although they can select a text size). Terry McDonell, editorof the Sports Illustrated Group, said in an interview at his office that the adherence to the print design was intentional.
“There’s something really great about magazines, about browsing,” he said. “Let’s heighten that.”
The product can be viewed without an Internet connection, though readers will need a wireless connection to download a new issue, watch video, or get live news and scores. David Link, the founder of Wonderfactory, which helped design the product, said he was not sure yet how it would be distributed, whether through iTunes or other companies’ marketplaces.
There are huge opportunities on the advertising front, Mr. McDonell said. Advertisers have been fleeing from print in part because print ads aren’t measurable — they don’t know how many people read them. Interactive ads on the tablet would provide hard numbers on readership and time spent with an ad. And an advantage over the Internet is that creatively, advertisers would not be limited to fixed boxes like they are on online. A concert promoter could include footage of Mariah Carey singing along with links to buy tickets to her show, while a camera advertiser could pull cost comparisons for his product at the reader’s local stores. “The question is, how do you make ads useful,” Mr. Link said. “It almost makes the ad a mini Web site.”
While no tablet computers have been released, and so there are no standards for Wonderfactory to work with, it’s creating the prototype with the assumption that Apple will create an iPhone-esque tablet next year that Wonderfactory can adjust the prototype for. “We’re taking a best guess that this has been designed for the Apple,” Mr. Link said, which he described as “the best-case scenario,” meaning having the most functionality. But he said this could be adjusted to other manufacturers’ tablet computers, too, and for other magazines.
A tablet might give manufacturers the chance for, essentially, a do-over in the online world. Magazines largely chose not to charge for content when Web sites became popular, assuming that online advertising would make up the difference. It hasn’t, which is one reason why magazines are in a bad state today.
Mr. McDonell said he was going to charge for the tablet version of the magazine, but was considering several models. Those may include offering subscriptions only, allowing purchases of single copies, or offering a discount on a tablet if consumers bought a certain type of subscription. “There are about 20 different models being worked on here,” he said.
While Mr. Link said he expects the first tablet computers to be ready in the second quarter of 2009, he is also working on platforms that are available now, like the iPhone. Mr. Link said Wonderfactory was also working on an iPhone version of Entertainment Weekly, another Time Inc. title. At Conde Nast, GQ is introducing an iPhone version of its magazine that costs $2.99.
Sports Illustrated today unveiled a prototype of what its magazine would look like on a tablet computer. While it won’t be available to consumers until tablet computers are — presumably sometime next year — it’s an important move for the magazine industry. If magazines can charge for content on tablet computers, and give advertisers data on who’s seeing their ads, a lot of their problems could be solved.
Apple, Hewlett-Packard and other manufacturers are expected to release tablet computers next year. While it’s unclear exactly what they’ll look like, the general guess is they’ll be like big iPhones, with interactive touch-screens. The larger size makes it feasible to put a magazine page on a tablet.
S.I. is sending over a video later this afternoon that will demonstrate the tablet’s capabilities, but here are a few of them. It replicates the magazine on the tablet computer, letting readers flip through the pages as though it’s a print product. The functionality, though, lets readers interact with the magazine much more. They can rearrange the sections and stories to read in whatever order they like. They can watch videos and see additional pictures from photo shoots.
They can get live updates of sports scores from all the teams they follow, or create pages of teams or athletes that pulls live statistics. When a match is on that the reader is interested in, an alert can pop up, and provide a way for the reader to play along — guessing whether Serena Williams will double-fault, for instance. And there’s a little wheel-shaped toolbar that pops up with any picture, quote or story that allows the reader to print, e-mail, share on Facebook, see related Twitter posts, view comments, get more stories about the topic, save the text or photograph to a favorites file, and other tools.
The pages’ design derives from print, though. For instance, readers are not allowed to zoom in and zoom out on text, and must instead view it on a fixed page (although they can select a text size). Terry McDonell, editorof the Sports Illustrated Group, said in an interview at his office that the adherence to the print design was intentional.
“There’s something really great about magazines, about browsing,” he said. “Let’s heighten that.”
The product can be viewed without an Internet connection, though readers will need a wireless connection to download a new issue, watch video, or get live news and scores. David Link, the founder of Wonderfactory, which helped design the product, said he was not sure yet how it would be distributed, whether through iTunes or other companies’ marketplaces.
There are huge opportunities on the advertising front, Mr. McDonell said. Advertisers have been fleeing from print in part because print ads aren’t measurable — they don’t know how many people read them. Interactive ads on the tablet would provide hard numbers on readership and time spent with an ad. And an advantage over the Internet is that creatively, advertisers would not be limited to fixed boxes like they are on online. A concert promoter could include footage of Mariah Carey singing along with links to buy tickets to her show, while a camera advertiser could pull cost comparisons for his product at the reader’s local stores. “The question is, how do you make ads useful,” Mr. Link said. “It almost makes the ad a mini Web site.”
While no tablet computers have been released, and so there are no standards for Wonderfactory to work with, it’s creating the prototype with the assumption that Apple will create an iPhone-esque tablet next year that Wonderfactory can adjust the prototype for. “We’re taking a best guess that this has been designed for the Apple,” Mr. Link said, which he described as “the best-case scenario,” meaning having the most functionality. But he said this could be adjusted to other manufacturers’ tablet computers, too, and for other magazines.
A tablet might give manufacturers the chance for, essentially, a do-over in the online world. Magazines largely chose not to charge for content when Web sites became popular, assuming that online advertising would make up the difference. It hasn’t, which is one reason why magazines are in a bad state today.
Mr. McDonell said he was going to charge for the tablet version of the magazine, but was considering several models. Those may include offering subscriptions only, allowing purchases of single copies, or offering a discount on a tablet if consumers bought a certain type of subscription. “There are about 20 different models being worked on here,” he said.
While Mr. Link said he expects the first tablet computers to be ready in the second quarter of 2009, he is also working on platforms that are available now, like the iPhone. Mr. Link said Wonderfactory was also working on an iPhone version of Entertainment Weekly, another Time Inc. title. At Conde Nast, GQ is introducing an iPhone version of its magazine that costs $2.99.
