Good and bad, I define these terms
Quite clear, no doubt, somehow
Ah, but I was so much older then
I’m younger than that now
- MY BACK PAGES

A year ago I had a dream that I was having an intimate chat with Steve Jobs about newspaper and magazine applications. “All the news apps currently out there “, he said after a thoughtful pause, “are shit. Why on earth should I have to wait tens of seconds, or even minutes, after I start the app before I can see the first page of my publication?”

“Well, Steve-o”, I said. “The main problem is that we can’t quietly download issues in the background. The only way we can do that is shiftily declare our app as a VoIP app in which case we get some background capability. But it only works after starting and stopping the app, and your digilent App Reviewers would reject the app anyway.”

“Good point, Boofie, good point”, he said. “I think I better fix that.”

And, with the release of Newsstand for iOS 5, he did.

Newsstand is here

Newsstand was announced this week as part of the fanfare that was the WWDC 2011. In essence, a new icon will appear on the home screen of all users and will be used as a folder to store edition based content. It looks rather similar to the iBooks apps. One big difference is that iBooks is an app that one needs to download from the App Store. Newsstand is baked into the operating system.

End Users: Newsstand is a Clever Folder

From the point of view of an end user, Newsstand behaves like an iOS folder. Previously, each news application you had would sit on your home screens like any other app. Now, news apps will instead sit inside the Newsstand folder/application. This will give a few nice user interface advantages too. Instead of a generic icon for the publication, Newsstand will show the cover of the latest issue. And it will be able to tell you if a publication is new, and send you push notifications when a new issue is ready for your reading pleasure. As I understand it, publishers can choose to ignore newsstand completely and submit apps as they’ve always done. But if they do this, they won’t get the benefits of the new API that apps in the Newsstand can use.

Developers: Newsstand is an API for background download

For me, this is the cool part. Steve has come good on his promise. If, when developing your application you register as a Newsstand application, you get access to the NewsstandKit.framework. This lets you do two new things. Firstly, it lets you add and remove issues from the Newsstand application on the user’s home screen. Secondly, and most importantly, it lets you download your new editions in the background, even if the app isn’t running in the background. So the user will wake up in the morning, and your new edition will already be on his device. #FTW

Apart from this new API, you write your apps in exactly the same way. You submit them to the App Store in exactly the same way, and they are downloaded from the App Store in exactly the same way. So developers of stand alone news applications don’t need to worry about Apple stepping on their toes. iOS 5 is wonderful news for them, not a competitor.

It seems that there are some things that the API won’t support yet. It’ll work great if you’re a title that publishes weekly or daily like the good old print days. It isn’t clear how it will help if you want constantly updated content pushed to your daily edition – it appears that every background download job relats to a whole issue, a.k.a. a new icon in the Newsstand. We’ll need to dig deep to see how this can be done.

Publishers: Newsstand doesn’t change the publishing workflow, or economics

Newsstand does not provide any authoring tools, so you create editions in the same way you’ve always done. If you’ve got an existing standalone application, not a huge amount changes. You’ll still pay Apple their 30% as you do at the moment. Your users will still pay for your editions through the App Store or through In-App Purchases.

There seems to be a common misconception that people can discover edition based content (news, magazines, etc) through Newsstand. Now I don’t believe this is true. Newsstand will only show you titles that you have downloaded already. However, there probably will be a new way to search these titles through the App Store, which will create a new little market dynamic all on it’s own. I guess there might well be a view of the App Store embedded into Newsstand like there is for iBooks at the moment.

Winners and Losers

It’s a sad fact of life that OS-baked app “innovations” from the big boys will destroy smaller players that have a competitive product. From my perspective, the winners here are the end users, publishers and developers of stand-alone news applications. Companies like Adobe (with their Digital Publishing Suite) and those that create tools that sit on top of InDesign to create standalone apps (Woodwing, Mag+, Aquafadas, etc) are largely unaffected, unless they had an idea they could also create their own store front.

The losers are the poor sods that are creating aggregator readers and charging outside of the App Store. I’m thinking mainly of people like poor Zinio who I think are going to struggle. For publisher consortiums that are more about the relationships than the technology (for example Next Issue Media), things might still be okay if they just adopt the new technology. We mustn’t forget that iOS isn’t the only platform out there and that Android is becoming increasingly important. But, for 2011 at least, iOS is really the only platform out there that matters.

And a Shameless Plug

And for those of you that don’t know, my new company is working on a hybrid iOS/HTML5 based reader called Pugpig. We’re lauching very very soon, so follow @thepugpig for the latest news. Here is a sneaky screenshot of our Pugpig Guide sample book in the Newsstand.

Disclaimer: The API may change before iOS 5 gets released, so I might be completely wrong about all of this. And, in my dream, Steve didn’t actually use the word “shit”.

Now there’s a wall between us, somethin’ there’s been lost
I took too much for granted, got my signals crossed
Just to think that it all began on a long-forgotten morn
“Come in,” she said, “I’ll give you shelter from the storm
- SHELTER FROM THE STORM

The State of Paywalls

Another high profile publication is putting up walls. The New York  Times is planning on charging again. Their paywall is up in Canada, and will be up globally by the end of the month. And it looks to be one of the least secure implementations yet. They seem to have done everything on the client. So, first, the content is always actually on the page. They just pop an obscuring <div> on top of it so that you can’t see the content, and stop the browser scrolling. This guy has already written a 3-line script for dodging it which I’ll reproduce in full:

//Prototype is already installed on NYTimes pages, so I'll use that:
$('overlay').hide();
$('gatewayCreative').hide();
$(document.body).setStyle( { overflow:'scroll' } );

So one way for non-techies go get around the paywall is to use something like the above in a Greasemonkey or similar script. Or, if you want to be more dramatic about it, you could even use this spaceship to shoot away the offending HTML elements. It’s cool as you can shoot the paywall and the ads together.

Using an HTML element destroying spaceship to tear down a paywall

The New York Times also have a 20 free articles per month thing going. Again, implemented client side using a cookie. Delete your cookies from the site, and it is all yours. Getting around this paywall is so easy that it looks like they didn’t even try to properly protect the content. And maybe they didn’t.

In fact, there is a strong argument to say that a secure paywall isn’t a good idea. The Times of London have a well implemented, pretty secure paywall, but they are one of the few. The Wall Street Journal, probably the most successful pay wall of the lot, do a simple referer check. If you’re coming from Google, you get access. So if you’ve got the energy, just search for the headline on Google to get your free access. If you’ve got less energy but more skillz, just spoof your referer using Spoofy or something. This also works on the New York Times site.

The Problem

The root of the problem is getting the balance correct between social sharing and decent security, and we all know how users hate (and I mean proper, vitriolic hate) hitting a paywall when clicking on a shared link.

When it comes to the crunch, there are only three models that are possible to securely implement:

• Option #1: No real security that a monkey couldn’t avoid. This is the NYT, WSJ and many more. But this will stop the vast majority of folk “stealing” the content. The biggest downside is probably the press reaction too the joke of a paywall, as has just happened with the NYT.
• Option #2: Allow limited access to non-paying users (first click free, 20 free articles per month, or whatever). However, in order to do this securely the user must register first. And although registration is less of a barrier than asking for a credit card, it’ll still scare people off in droves. And if registration is too easy without a valid email address check, you’ll get a whole load of Donald Duck’s registering. Off the top of my head I can’t think of anyone doing this at the moment.
• Option #3: The Full Monty. All users have to pay to see any protected content. The Times of London are doing this. I really don’t like this option for most people as new readers will be hard to come by. You might do well from existing loyal fans, but in the long term I can’t see it working. Sharing is caring and all that.

The Solution

Fucked if I know.

With all of the above models, not all of the content needs to be protected. The Times of London protects everything. As does the pr0n industry. Others only protect parts of their site. Some protect content until it is a bit stale (a week, or maybe an hour in financial services). I quite like The Daily’s model. They simply don’t bother to try to protect the stuff on the web site. I don’t think they’re even bothered by the sites popping up allegedly circumventing the paywall. You pay for the iPad app and hopefully that offers such a lovely experience that it is worth it.

My view is you probably want the paywall to leak, so superficial security is probably best. You certainly want people posting links to your content on FaceBook, Twitter and the rest.  The people that try to “hack” it probably wouldn’t have paid anyway, so you’ve got some nice differential pricing going there already. Especially if you’re getting ad revenue too. Maybe show a lot more ads to the non-registered users.

Of course, if it is easy enough for my deceased grandmother to bypass, you’ve got problems. No-one will pay, and you’ll piss off the people that already have. But if you lose 3% or something, it doesn’t sound like the end of the world. Comparable to shoplifting in retail.

Now this clearly doesn’t work for single, high value assets (books, movies, music) where people will go to a lot of effort to get their grubby little hands on a single item of content. But for newspapers and magazines, it is probably time for most publishers to choose Option #1, give up on 100% security, hope that legitimate experience is a whole lot better than the cheating experience and accept that there are some people that won’t pay for anything.

Or a better solution

Wait! Before we give up, I think Option #2 is the long term solution. No-one seems to do it at the moment because the registration barrier is big and people won’t even register to see content shared with them. But what if they were registered already? If a publisher could throw their proprietary registration system out the window and allow access through Google, FaceBook or TheNextBigThing, they would be laughing. Then they could provide proper, secure metered access/first click free/X free per month and lots lots more without scaring users off. And, of course, when they can do their one-click payment through the above things get even better, but that’s another topic.

Secure paywalls aren’t that hard, and these leaky things offend my sensibilities. I’m not aware of any publishers doing this properly at the moment. Or are they? Let me know. Over and out.

Call me any name you like
I will never deny it
Farewell Angelina
The sky is erupting
I must go where it’s quiet
- FAREWELL ANGELINA

Come gather ’round friends let me tell you a tale. I’ve been rather quiet these last twelve months. My poor blog has been lacking the frequent wisdom you all grew to depend on. And when the posts did come, they were often inane lacking in substance. You see, friends, I was involved in some top secret shiftyness and I signed a lot of pieces of paper which meant I couldn’t really talk about a lot of interesting things.

But I’m free from that now. So while it isn’t clear that my noble attempt to save the publishing industry from itself has been a success, I’ve emerged from the other side even wiser (gasp!) than before. I’m once again allowed to talk about things, and I’ve got a whole lot of shit I’d like to talk about. So, loyal readers, watch this space for more exciting news about Content Management Systems. And the Publishing Industry. And Paywalls. And Tablets and other Mobile Shit. And Adobe and Woodwing and HTML and iOS and Core Text. And lots lots more.

On the down side, I might not have much time to share all this wisdom with all of you. You see, I’ve started a new company with a few other brilliant people and we’re going to try to save the Publishing Industry from itself yet again. This promises to be time consuming, but I promise I’ll spend more time on this blog as my readers are worth saving too.

So that’s the news. Back with a Bang.

Where were you when it started
Do you want it for free
What was it you wanted
Are you talking to me?
- WHAT WAS IT YOU WANTED?

Right. It’s the iPad and, obvious jokes aside, I think the device is going to revolutionise more than just reading on the toilet.

Here’s the thing – the iPad is just too damn beautiful for shit content. I think this is the best thing that has happened to publishing for a long long time. People will pay for content on this baby, and on other devices that follow. Be assured, they will follow, just like they followed the iPhone. I wouldn’t disrespect my iPad (that someone is sure to send me as a gift) by reading machine-generated advertorial crap on it. I want to read good content written by people that are paid to write. And I’d be happy to pay a small fee for this – for books, newspapers, magazines, video and the hybrids of these that are going to emerge.

We recently saw a lot of people paying for the Guardian iPhone App, although I don’t understand how a one-off payment for content is sustainable. We need a way to do in-app recurring payments, which should be relatively easy. Murdoch’s threat to remove News Corp content from Google and start charging for it makes more and more sense. And all you people that scream about content being free – consider the BBC web site for a second. They produce wonderful content, which is paid for by every citizen in the UK as part of our taxes, and I don’t think many people begrudge them this.

There will also be people that scream “Damn You, @McBoof. How could you write about the joys Open Data and Open Standards then embrace a Paywall. Judas!”. To those I say, “Trust Me, Open does not always mean Free”. More on this another time.

A last thought on the iPad. The fact that it doesn’t have a camera doesn’t bother me at all. The lack of Flash is a small issue, but I don’t like Flash much. No USB port sadly – the device is still too closed for me. And it needs to multitask, and I got the impression from what I’ve seen so far that it doesn’t. That sucks a bit. Still, I want one.

Let’s close on a video from 2006 (thanks to @halvorson):