Apple has two problems with its spoken word ventures. On the audiobook front, Amazon has a near-monopoly with Audible. On the podcast front, they are facing intense competition from Amazon and Spotify. After spending a few weeks with Blinkist, I think it would make an ideal acquisition for Apple.
I’ve never had less time for movies, TV shows, books, and podcasts at this point in my life. Unfortunately, there has never been such a wealth of content as there is today. It seems like a new hit show starts every other day, along with countless great books and movies coming out as well. A few weeks ago, 9to5Mac’s Michael Potuck recommended Blinkist to me, and I was immediately hooked.
Blinkist is a paid audiobook service, but it’s unlike anything you’ve likely used before. Like I said earlier, I don’t have the time to consume all the books I want to read/listen to, so what Blinkist does is takes non-fiction books and condenses them down into “Blinks,” where it breaks down the high points of the books, and you can read/listen to them in under twenty minutes. I listened to the Getting Things Done Blink since I have already read the book multiple times to see how effective they are. After listening to the “Blink,” I understood the high-level concepts from the book. Since I signed up, I’ve listened to over forty Blink books. It’s been a great alternative to traditional podcasts, and I’ve learned a lot in a short amount of time. Blink’s content team does an excellent job of condensing the content down while giving you the key takeaways that the original author wanted to communicate.
Apple should acquire Blinkist
Acquiring Blinkist would be an ideal way to create an Apple Podcasts+ service bundled with Apple One. It would make a strong bundle of content exclusive to Apple Podcasts while allowing people to “consume” books that they might usually not have time to listen to. Then it could be a funnel into Apple Books if people want to read/listen to the entire book. Blinkist offers 27 categories and offers over 4,000 books. They add around 40 new titles every month as well. This service would allow Apple to deliver something within Apple Podcasts that no other company could offer.
Shortcasts
Blinkist also offers Shortcasts are key ideas from a podcast episode, add updates, new insight, and fresh perspective — and put it together into an engaging listen of up to 15 minutes. This type of service would be fantastic for certain kinds of podcast episodes. Apple already has more relationships with podcasters than Blink does, so they’d be able to continue expanding this service.
Wrap up on Blinkist
Check Blinkist out, and let me know your thoughts in the comments or on Twitter. There is a seven-day free trial, and then it’s $99 annually. It’s become one of my go-to services while cleaning and doing laundry. I went ahead and pre-paid for the year. I’ve canceled my Audible subscription for the time being, and Blinkist is now my go-to place for non-fiction content.
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