We blogged towards the end of last year about the prototype for an Sports Illustrated tablet and with ever increasing anticipation surrounding Apple’s entry to this market, the possibilities for digital publishing look interesting.
The Guardian considers the prospect of iTunes becoming a global gateway for online micropayments to allow a fast and simple way for users to access online content. Could the business model that has proved so successful for music lend itself to publishing?
We posted just last week about ‘local’ being the new ‘social’ for news publishers and it seems the guardian.co.uk (perhaps even taking editorial inspiration from the Moreover Blog!?) agrees.
The Digital Content Blog has posted a nice write-up of just a handful of the developments over in the States where many online news outlets are already trying to take advantage of this new ‘hyperlocal‘ buzz. AOL and some former eBay execs are both taking interesting steps in this direction, with AOL looking to expand it’s recently acquired Patch network and eBay founder Pierre Omidyar bidding to kick-start his local news service Peer News. Not forgetting that we have blogged in the past about YouTube’s efforts in this area and with foursquare regularly being touted as the ‘next Twitter’ is hyperlocal getting you excited?
Here is an interesting piece from Mashable on the convergence of social media and local news. Publishers seem especially keen on exploring more and more local content, with social media seemingly a great compliment to this trend.
As people access this specific hyperlocal content, and engage in it at the same time, then I’m sure both publishers and users will see the benefits.
CNN.com, one of the most popular websites in the U.S., has unveiled a rather radical and exciting new layout.
The new design makes the most of CNN’s strong branding, and it’s great to see user-generated content in the form of iReport being given the opportunity to shine.
So what do you think? Is it an improvement on before or is there still further to go before mainstream news sites really take advantage of their communities?
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