News Corp's The Daily iPad App Shutting Down On December 15

An anonymous reader writes with news that, as predicted, the iPad only newspaper The Daily failed. From the article: "The goal of The Daily was to provide a modern spin on the news cycle by delivering world news draped in a multimedia experience. In other words, The Daily devoted a lot of resources towards adding photos, video, and touch controls to news stories that would otherwise be static. ... It was announced today that The Daily will be closing up shop on December 15 after failing to rake in the dough."

Re:The Daily did not understand the web

[mea_culpa]

The content was interlaced with intrusive adverts that seemed to take over. In a magazine you could easily flip over the ads and even read ads that caught your eye. The Daily put them front and center in your face. People aren't used to paying for apps and being force-fed ads.
This and the mostly homogenized content was enough for me to uninstall it.

Re:An Object Lesson For Web Site Designers

[PopeRatzo]

I firmly believe there are two groups of people: those who want information to "feed" them (passive learners) and those who want to drive the learning experience (active learners.

There is a third group: those who believe your so-called "learning" is really a tool of Satan and the liberals.

That's News Corp's target audience.

Re:Management Charlie Foxtrot

[Quiet_Desperation]

Ties? Seriously? I'm in charge of multimillion dollar R&D involving stuff that gets shot into space and I wear polo shirts, jeans and sneakers daily. Even customer meetings are just slacks and dress shirts, but I have some awesome space themed ties that I like to wear for those.

People need to wake up and realize "dress for success" was invented by clothing manufacturers.

Re:An Object Lesson For Web Site Designers

[Quiet_Desperation]

There's two types of people: those who think there's only two types of people and clear thinkers. :-)

But seriously, stop with these monochromatic views of the world already. It's destroying us as a society.

Most people will fall into both categories on different topics. Sometimes I want the deep knowledge you can only get a from a book with lots of very detailed text and diagrams. Other times, yeah, I want Mythbusters, and anyone who thinks less of me for that is warmly welcomed to piss off and croak.

Re:The Daily did not understand the web

[Anonymous Coward]

Also, why did they require an app to get the content? That meant it wasn't linkable, was restricted to only one device, and couldn't easily be shared.

Have you always had this annoying habit of answering your own questions right after you ask them? Remember, this IS News Corp.

Re:The Daily did not understand the web

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Didn't understand it?

I'd say that they loathed everything about it and built accordingly:

The Web? If you put it up there, somebody probably has a cache even if you take it down. The Daily? Either the memory hole was a deliberate feature, or their developers somehow managed to miss some awfully basic lessons on content storage and organization. The Web? More or less works on anything with enough RAM for a browser. The Daily? Works with a single, blessed, app for a single platform. The Web? It isn't called 'the web' because linking is difficult... The Daily? Not so much.

I'm not on the 'zOMG, HTML5 4 lyfe! We should replace all native binaries with javascript that bit-bangs a canvas tag to provide the lousiest graphics performance since the introduction of the "2D accelerator" back in the day!' bandwagon; but I am deeply underimpressed by the fad of creating 'apps' that are little more than the platform's HTML engine wrapped in enough vendor-specific shitsauce that you can't call the result a webpage anymore. It appears to be for 'mobile' what building website menu structures entirely in Flash for no obvious reason whatsoever was to the web of old.

Re:An Object Lesson For Web Site Designers

[bhcompy]

No, that is Fox News' target audience. Rupert Murdoch knows how to make money and he knows that putting all your eggs in one basket is an easy way to kill your business. Jason Whitlock, one of the most prominent and controversial columnists for Fox Sports, is decidedly anti-gun(as noted this weekend on national television) and decidedly a minority(might as well assuming you're going full derptard in your vitriol). That won't stop him from continuing to be one of the most prominent and controversial columnists for Fox Sports because people read his work and that makes money.

You seem to think that News Corp/Murdoch cares about ideology. You would be wrong, unless you consider making money an ideology.

Good news!

[onyxruby]

This is good news, and not because of the politics of News Corp. If this had been 'successful' you would be seeing a /lot/ more companies charging for online content. As anyone who has ever subscribed to a magazine, paid for a newspaper or bought cable knows, paying for your media doesn't save you from advertising.

The news has become a commodity, and with media sites outsourcing most of their work with Reuters and the Associated Press they have also outsourced their identity. Frankly for most people it doesn't matter whether they get their news from Toledo or Seattle because it's all the same news.

I've said before and I'll say again that there are two ways for a media site to succeed on the Internet. Two rules - eight words.
1. Your user experience matters.
2. Create relevant quality content.

If you obey those two rules you can and will do well online. Look at the Wall Street Journal, they charge for a lot of their content and still make money, why? The user experience isn't user hostile and the experience of using their web site is fairly pleasant. They also create unique content through their own journalism with quality stories. The New York Time is in a similar situation.

By following these two simple adages they make a lot of money compared to their competitors. One of these publications leans left politically, the other leans right and yet they both succeed where others fall flat.

Re:The Daily did not understand the web

[pete6677]

Too many news websites, like this Daily bullshit, have way too many stupid fucking videos. If I wanted to watch TV I'd watch TV. Yet another sign of the continued dumbing down of America (possibly the entire world).

Re:The Daily did not understand the web

[hairyfish]

It's not the fact that it has ads, it's nature in which they are delivered. I read my local paper online and ads just sit there on the side of the page like a conventional paper. Like a regular paper I can choose to read the ads or not. But if they were forced onto me full screen so I have to actually click something to move them away before being allowed to read my paper, then I will not read that paper any more. That strategy was doomed from the beginning.

Exactly

[TheSeatOfMyPants]

I have to devote my full attention to understand what's said in videos thanks to audio processing disorder, and few news videos include captions/subtitles... I wouldn't mind as much if they were just as informative as reading, but it takes most 5-10 minutes to cover as much as a reasonably short paragraph, making it a huge waste of my time & energy.

Re:The Daily did not understand the web

[Rich0]

Yup - this is why internet advertising is so reviled.

A newspaper is a page of black and white articles with some black and white ads nearby.

An online newspaper is a page of black and white articles, with some subset of:
1. Full color ads.
2. Ads that contain motion within them.
3. Ads that stay on screen even as you read down the page.
4. Ads that move around within the screen.
5. Ads that actually pop up over top of the article you're trying to read, and you get to try to close them.
6. Ads that do dynamic stuff that is broken on the browser you're using, so you have to resort to hacks like selecting text to try to get the page to scroll it out of the way of the text you're reading.
7. Ads that actually try to force you to watch them by blocking content and enforcing a time delay.
8. Ads that actually give you a quiz on the presented material before letting you see the article. (Yes, I've actually seen this.)

People don't have some kind of revulsion for online ads simply because they're online. People just hate ads that are intrusive. The last time I went to a play there were ads in the playbill, and I didn't care. Before the play started somebody thanked and named a sponsor or two, and I didn't care. Now, if in the middle of Act 1 Bozo the clown jumped in front of me and started waving signs and blowing his horns, then I'd care.