Re/code has an interesting look at the three different approaches major news organizations are taking to their Apple Watch apps.
The New York Times will dispatch one-sentence stories that answer the question, “Hey, did you hear?” in a conversational tone. The Washington Post will pick one story — say, an article about the end of tipping — and storyboard it like a movie or TV show, using a combination of graphics, images and text to adapt it for the 38 mm (or 42 mm) screen. CNN will let people personalize their news feeds by picking from among a dozen topics and choosing how they’d like to be notified (a tap on the wrist or no?).
News organizations weren’t particularly quick to adapt to the Internet, trying to stick to their existing business models in the face of rapidly-changing consumer behaviour, but this time the major players believe they are ready …
Andrew Phelps, senior product manager for the NY Times, said that a special team began working on a watch app as soon as Apple released the WatchKit SDK.
The watch comes at a really interesting time for us. It comes right at the moment that mobile is truly becoming, if not the most important platform, certainly a first class citizen.
CNN’s Chief Product Officer Alex Wellen said that mobile devices already account for almost half their traffic, so the watch was an obvious next step.
It’s important to go to the user – no longer can we ask them to come to us.
Cory Haik, executive producer and senior editor of digital news at The Washington Post, said that the company would learn by experimenting.
Nobody knows what storytelling is going to look like on the watch. We wanted to be among the first to experiment with it.
Which of the three approaches do you expect will be right for you? Take our poll and let us know your views in the comments, then check out our running list of notable Apple Watch apps already ready for you before Friday’s launch.
FTC: We use income earning auto affiliate links. More.
I want to read Crime and Punishment on my Apple Watch. Is that possible?
Yeah – but I think you need to buy the bundle that also includes War and Peace.
Not sure if this is already available with an Apple Watch app, but I think it’d be smart to use Handoff between Apple Watch & iPhone/iPad so if you wanted to dive deeper you’re not trying to hold your wrist up while reading an article.
I *think* that will be possible. From what I’ve read, I understand App developers can build Handoff into their apps. So it might not be possible with all apps. Again, this is solely based upon what I’ve read.
The same as RSS feeds, The Pebble Watch and others has been doing.
Which is 1 Sentence Version.
RSS gives you the headline, not a one-sentence summary of the story. It’s an important distinction since so many headlines are clickbait teasers, which leave out vital nuggets of information.
Eg: “Netflix announces launch date in Australia” might be a headline, whereas a one-sentence summary would look more like “Netflix will launch in Australia on March 24”
I think NYT are getting this one very right. Their subscription model allows them to do so, while many others still want to direct you to the article, so they can show you ads.
Stories or headlines need to be short and should not be CLICK BATE topics. If you want to continue reading, save for later, or click to open on your iphone…. The Watch shouldn’t be the place to read entire articles by default. The option should be given but not preferred… I think people are going to hate the watch when they first get it because they are going to be using it as a main device and not an accessory device killing the battery.
An excellent example there Milorad.
The Washington Post seems to have a fundamental misunderstanding of the purpose of a smartwatch. Nobody wants to spend more than a couple of seconds looking at their watch. The idea is to provide quick notifications and access to small bits of information that are relevant to the user at the appropriate time.
Any attempt to design a deep multimedia experience for news stories on a watch is a misguided waste of time and money.
I think a hybrid approach might be interesting…
Provide headlines for top stories.
Allow the user to filter specific topics (from their phone).
Use Force Touch to track a particular story and enable notifications for new developments on that story.
Provide a seamless experience when accessing the full app on the iPhone when user is ready to read the tracked stories in full.
I think The Guardian and Circa are in much better positions to get this right than CNN, NYT, or the Washington Post.
I think we are bombarded with way too much news as it is… no news on the Watch for me and my mental health.
My thoughts as well. I’ll not be enabling email or news feeds on my watch. I’m happy to have text messages and other personal communication, but I don’t need another device to check every five minutes.
This is something I don’t think I’d ever want my watch pestering me about. Maybe if you were in stocks or your job depended on being caught up on ground breaking news but I generally seek out news at set times of the day.
I won’t mind getting news stories on there, but I’ll disable the “tap on the wrist” for everything other than for calendar alerts. As a busy person, checking my phone every time it buzzes is too much, so now I can leave it in my pocket other than really important things.
Would also like to see a priority messaging feature of some sort. Where if your wife sends you 10 texts in a day that aren’t urgent, but right now is saying “Driving by your work in 5 minutes, should I pick you up?” she could push that one high-priority message to do a wrist-tap, but not every message she sends (“don’t forget next week is Bob’s birthday”)
(Yes, I have a chatty partner ;)
A (or “the”) watch is there to serve a purpose. If that purpose is for the newspapers and other content promoters to come yet one more inch closer to our eyes or to do so on a more frequent basis, then I’d rather pass.
For me a smartwatch should make my life simpler, not busier. So, no news alerts for me.