The Daily: It Ain’t Lookin’ Good.

It’s no secret that I’m not a believer in the iPad (or any tablet for that matter) as the herald of a new era in the world of media. Whilst I now have to admit that Apple has managed to take a product that’s already been done and popularise it to the point of mainstream I still remain wholly unconvinced that this new platform will change the way the media giants operate. Thus far all experiments with launching on this platform haven’t done well but this could be easily due to them not working well in their traditional forms either. Then comes along The Daily, the brainchild of media giant Rupert Murdoch which be almost wholly confined to the iPad. With $30 million spent on research and development and a budget of $500,000 a day you’d think that this publication would have a real chance at beginning the media revolution, but I’m still not convinced.

You see whilst I might be coming around to the idea that this whole tablet craze might actually have something to it (I’m really taking a shine to the Motorola Xoom) the media industry has an absolutely terrible track record when it comes to adopting new forms of media. Whilst a new platform might be extremely popular if it conflicts with their way of doing business they are more likely to fight it than they are to try and innovate with it. Heck many of the traditional media outlets are still struggling to make their subscription based model work on the Internet and that hasn’t enjoyed the success they thought it would. Why then would the same model work for the iPad? From what I can see it doesn’t.

But don’t take my word for it (since I’m a biased source on this subject) take it from the many other people that are under whelmed by Murdoch’s latest offerings. From the videos and initial user reports it seems like The Daily is much like its print cousins, delivering news the day after it happens. They have managed to blend in a lot of social media elements (like Twitter streams and Facebook sharing) but the integration appears to be very weak with the Twitter streams being half a day old and the link sharing giving only a small part of the article. In an age where social media thrives on the latest information even being a day behind in the news¹ means you’re way behind what everyone is interested in. There’s still a place for good journalism however I don’t believe it’s on the iPad, at least not in the form that has been presented to us thus far.

One good thing to come out of this though is the addition to iOS SDK that allows app developers to make use of the subscription framework that The Daily uses. It’s not a major change to the SDK but it does allow other publications and apps the ability to deliver additional paid content to an iOS device without prompting having to prompt the user or sending them through some weird web work flow.

More it seems that people are interested in crafting their own news feed based around their mediums of choice. Twitter is arguably the medium for breaking news with blogs coming in close second and traditional media sources serving as verification once the story has been broken. This is one of the core principles of the Internet in action and no matter how hard you try time has shown that free access to a service is wildly more successful than a walled garden with a ticket price. Of course it’s still very early days for The Daily and the next few months will be crucial in terms of judging the viability of the publication. Right now it doesn’t look good for them but since they’re already $30 million in the hole I figure Murdoch is watching the reaction to his new publication closely and if he’s smart there’ll be some radical changes coming soon.

¹Yes yes, it’s quite obviously that I’m usually several days (or weeks) behind when it comes to reporting stuff. This isn’t a news blog though so being in the midst of media storms isn’t my thing so you can keep your “how ironic” comments to yourselves 😛