“Aggregation apps need to respond to consumer demands”

In this article, Jenn Webb highlights how essential it is for aggregation app creators to respond directly to user needs.

She writes that “companies are finally starting to see that consumers of news crave a platform that will bring them what they want to read, anytime they want to read it, and exactly how they want to read it (we’re a demanding lot).”

Reading this article emphasised the need to accurately investigate and directly respond to what users are demanding from their apps. This is an essential part of coming up with new app ideas.

Q&A with Kate Brodock on Content Curation

Last year, WebProNews quizzed Kate Brodock, Executive Director of Digital and Social Media at Syracuse University, on her thoughts on content curation:

What does it take to be successful in content curation?

“It comes down to a few key processes. You need to have good aggregation tools in place to gather and filter information. You then need to have a way to centralize and showcase that information in a way that communicates to your audience effectively. Lastly, in most cases – especially those involving gathering information from digital, user-driven sources, you’ve got to nail down the verification of that info. While in many ways curation has become easier, it’s also become harder to sift through and find the reliable and factual sources.”

“What are the best tools available right now for content curation and why?

A few of my favorites: Storify.com, for a centralization tool. I use it a lot, for various purposes, and they actually just launched a bunch of major changes yesterday, I’ve played around with them and it’s a great improvement on many levels. In terms of aggregation, I’m a Google Reader person, but I’ve also started playing around with pearltrees.com lately. It’s as if you mind-mapped your RSS feed list. Very neat concept. A few others that stick out are the Zite and Flipboard apps for iPad for content discovery. Depending on what needs you have, blogging platforms like Posterous and Tumblr make it easier for teams to curate and centralize third-party content as well.”

“Who is doing it wrong?

People or organizations tend to falter in two areas. In the verification process or when they should be giving proper attribution to the original content creator. These two areas need special attention.”

Her answers really helped me throughout the process of developing my ideas for M&G Plus. They reminded me that I needed to be aware of some of the problems associated with content curation and specifically news aggregation, such as giving due credit to the creators of the content and quality control and verification.

It also prompted me to examine some of the competition out there such as Zite and Flipboard and other newspaper apps, and uncover what they are doing right and what I like and also aspects that they are lacking.

Creating a successful app

I found this article on iphonelife.com really helpful in the development of my app idea and in the pitch. Even though it was not specifically directed at creating and developing a news app, a lot of the information and tips applied to my project as well:

• Think about making it unique. “There are roughly 600 new apps submitted to Apple each day—what is going to differentiate your app from the thousands that are already available and being launched each week?”

• Define and map out the app clearly. “What its going to do, who its for, etc”

The article also examines why so many apps fail each year and some of the common pitfalls to avoid:

• A lack of planning and research in the early stages of the project. “Make sure that you thoroughly think about how your app will be successful and how you will measure that success.
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• “There has been no attention to marketing. Simply posting an app to the iTunes store and hoping that people will find out about it is a recipe for disaster.”

“Reasons to be Cheerful: An Optimist’s view on the State of Digital Journalism”

Last year, at the 12th International Symposium on Online Journalism, keynote speaker Vivian Schiller outlined several reasons to be optimistic about the future of digital journalism. Several of these points were relevant to developing the ideas for my app and pitch:

• “Apps are the holy grail of engagement. Nearly half of U.S. news consumers are getting their news from cell phones and tablets.”

• “Legacy news organizations finally seem willing to branch beyond their core business and make new partnerships without fear of disrupting their core businesses.”  For example The Washington Post’screation of the Trove site, which lets users personalize their news streams based on their interests.

This shows that users’ news consumption habits are changing and newspaper apps need to keep up with these in order to survive, which is will be one of the central arguments of my pitch.

It also shows that news organisations are slowly beginning to take risks in the digital world. This backs up some of my ideas and proves that although M&G Plus is a bold concept, it might be a risk worth taking.

The future of newspaper apps

Reading  this tech journalism blog served as the initial spark for my idea for the Mail & Guardian Plus application. It discusses The Tapln Bay Area app which is “a mobile social network for news that allows users to submit news from wherever they are.” It an interesting idea which combines “geo-based” interactivity between users and a traditional news app.

While this is quite a different idea to my own, it is similar in the way that it is attempting to bring something more to newspaper apps, rather than simply repackaging the existing product. My app aims to build on similar ideas that newspaper apps should begin to provide their users with a service as well as simply a product.

Six things aggregator apps need to do

Since Flipboard was named ‘App of the Year’ in 2010, the app store has seen an explosion of news aggregating apps. This Poynter article lays out six key things that news aggregating apps need to do in order to remain competitive in this saturated section of the app world.

• “The design must be tablet-friendly
• Must be profitable
• News must be up-to-the-minute current
• Sources must be comprehensive and diverse
• Recommendations must be relevant
• Must be low maintenance”

While some of these might seem quite obvious, they were important points to keep in mind throughout the whole process of developing the ideas for my news app.