After knocking out a few chapters on my Kindle, I switched over to my favorite iPad app, Zite. It not only does a good job of aggregating content, but finds new sources to pull from. I've discovered several new sites that are now in my regular reading rotation.
While laying comfortably on my parents' couch, this headline immediately grabbed me:
 |
| John Mitchell, ReadWriteWeb |
It was from Jon Mitchell's article on ReadWriteWeb about Evening Edition, a side project for Mule Design. Mitchell describes how Evening Edition is "the first news site I've ever read from top to bottom two days in a row."
The site's content is edited by Anna Rascouët-Paz of Annual Reviews. It takes the day's most important stories, removes the "noise" and provides you with a good ten minutes to an hour of reading, depending on how deep you dive into each post's links.
Mitchell points out that there is no push notification, no breaking news, no live updates. Evening Edition pushes new content live everyday at 5pm PST, just in time for the new habit that sparked the project.
This study shows that iPad users frequently use their device after 5pm at home. This sparked the idea of Evening Edition. People are taking their advanced hardware from Apple and Motorola and doing what they did years ago, sit in a comfortable chair and read. They want to relax, not find what the best information is from a live firehouse of feeds and notifications.
What Evening Edition did was what many other companies are finding. People want a simple, fast solution. Ace Hardware is following others such as Walmart, Taget, and Meijer by opening up small "express" stores. This allows them to open locations in dense urban areas, but also provides shoppers with a quick solution to finding what they really need. Consumers of goods and content are moving from the overload of giant stores and basic RSS readers to local shops and stripped down news apps.
There was the tech bubble, some say the valuation bubble, this guy thinks there's a filter bubble (I think the's a smart dude). Have we reached the "content bubble?"
This article from the Harvard Business Review points out the importance of mobility.
Mobility is radically different from the stationary "desktop" experience. In some cases, mobility is a "lean back" experience like sitting on a commuter train watching a video. In other cases it can be "lean forward" — like shopping for a gift while you take your lunch break at the park. And in many cases, it's "lean free" when your body is in motion, or you're standing in line scanning news headlines or photos from friends while you wait for your turn to be called.As more devices and stores become smaller. Retail and content providers are going to have to follow the lead of Evening Edition. Find what and when people want something. Then give them the best "stuff" that will fit in that space or time. Whether its a Walmart in Brooklyn or the news I read at 5pm PST.
Eric Wortman on Google+
Posts
