I’m just going to state this up front: visual news readers are the next (and current) big thing on the iPad. Pulse was featured in the The New York Times, then made its way to the iPhone, too. My Newspapers. The Early Edition. Blogshelf, featured in many other blogs.
But the thing that surprises me most, is that people actually keep on buying these apps. They’re willing to try something new. They’re spending their bucks every single week for the new kid on the block of visuals news readers just to, perhaps, change their habits again the next week. I have the feeling this kind of applications are what Twitter clients were for the iPhone in the early days: a goldmine. Just like people discovered that tweeting from a phone (from the iPhone, especially) could be a highly enjoyable experience (sometimes even better than on the desktop), now they’re looking for a better, new way to consume news. It’s the natural circle of things: a developer comes around and reinvents a genre.
It is a few ones’ job to fine-tune it, just look at how Loren Brichter waited to develop his Twitter client, eventually acquired by Twitter itself.
Developers are coming out with these visual news readers. Should we give them a new name? Let’s say visual feeds, because that’s what they are now. Plus some adjustments to browsing and navigation, that is.
Can Apollo News claim the throne of the best new app in this new category?
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