Apple News App

Apple News is gaining its first-ever editor-in-chief, according to a new report from Politico. Lauren Kern will take on the newly created role at Apple after serving in prominent positions at both The New York Times Magazine and New York Magazine.

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Apple announced at the start of this year that its iAd network was going away over the summer, which affected advertising in its story aggregating News app in iOS 9 and later. Today Recode is reporting that Apple has inked an exclusive deal with NBCUniversal that lets them run ad sales for Apple News.

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Apple appears to be taking its new Apple News app to the place that news often breaks (then spreads), Twitter. The Twitter handle @applenews has been dressed for the job for several months now although it’s been inactive before today and it isn’t yet marked “verified” by Twitter; Apple execs Eddy Cue and Roger Rosner are among those that follow the account, however, which suggests it’s an official Apple property. Here’s the first tweet that was shared today:

Follow us here for top stories & great reads from your favorite publishers, curated by our U.S. editors.

9to5Mac reported based on job listings last summer that Apple’s News app will employ human editors to curate stories featured within the app, and Apple recently started promoting the editor’s pick section within the app around iOS 9.3. Now it looks like Apple is going one step further and will use Twitter to drive attention to the Apple News app on iPhone and iPad…

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Apple is finally rolling out its Apple News Format to all publishers, after an initial announcement at WWDC 2015. The format lets anyone, big or small, create rich multimedia stories within the Apple News app, featuring panoramas, videos, animations and more.

Until today, Apple News Format was limited to exclusive launch partners (like Wired) whilst everyone else had to resort to basic RSS import. Publishers interested in using the format should check out the documentation on Apple’s website.

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Apple originally launched its own News app for iOS last June and now the company looks to be expanding the ad offerings of which publishers can take advantage. According to a support document updated recently, Apple will soon start allowing ads that resemble normal articles in the Apple News app (via BI).

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Apple reportedly has plans to work with publishers to support viewing subscription content in its Apple News app, according to Reuters which cites two anonymous sources. Currently, the Apple News app does not support authenticating subscriber log-ins. That means content can’t be behind a pay wall and can only be monetized by web advertising when readers follow through to the publisher’s website or by using iAds. Apple’s iAd network is noticeably going through a shuffle at the moment with the company recently announcing the end of its App Network where developers advertise their apps.

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Apple’s rocky iAd advertising platform is about to see some major changes, says Buzzfeed’s John Paczkowski. According to the report, Apple plans to dismantle its iAd sales team and stop its role as a middleman between publishers and customers:

While iAd itself isn’t going anywhere, Apple’s direct involvement in the selling and creation of iAd units is ending. “It’s just not something we’re good at,” one source told BuzzFeed News. And so Apple is leaving the creation, selling, and management of iAds to the folks who do it best: the publishers.

Apple is phasing out its iAd sales force entirely and updating the iAds platform so that publishers can sell through it directly.

The big news, Buzzfeed notes, is publishers that play ball will take home 100% of the ad revenue generated rather than a 70/30 split with Apple.

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It’s been an interesting day for user number stories out of Apple over the weekend. Early Sunday morning it was reported that Apple Music has reached 10 million paying subscribers, or half way to what Spotify currently claims, and a story published late Sunday night includes an interesting confession from Apple’s services guy Eddy Cue. The Apple exec told the WSJ that the company hasn’t been accurately counting the number of users actively using its new Apple News app.

“We’re in the process of fixing that now, but our numbers are lower than reality,” he said. “We don’t know what the right number is,” but he added that it was better to undercount than overcount traffic.

Despite the glitch, Mr. Cue said Apple is pleased with the product so far. He said most feedback from publishers has been positive. Usage has “scaled very fast…but it doesn’t mean we don’t all want more,” he said.

The lower-than-reality numbers have been shared with publishers that use the number to make decisions about using supporting the platform and optionally advertising through it.

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This is our year in review. We’ll discuss everything we’ve seen, product releases, and how we feel about it all in the Apple ecosystem. The Happy Hour podcast is available for download on iTunes and through our dedicated RSS feed.

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Alongside the release of iOS 9.2 today, Apple is making some improvements to its recently launched News app that it hopes will improve the service for both readers and publishers.

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Following his interviews centered around the new Apple TV, Apple’s SVP of software and services Eddy Cue has now sat down with CNN’s Brian Stelter to discuss the News app the company launched alongside iOS 9. In the interview, Cue and Stelter discuss a variety of points surrounding News, including Apple’s main goal with the app, the expansion to additional countries, and revenue sharing.

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During its Q4 2015 earnings call today, Tim Cook revealed the first numbers for its new Apple News service saying that the app has around 40 million users since launching alongside iOS 9 in September.
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Apple News, a news reading app introduced in iOS 9 that replaces Newsstand, is only available in the United States for now, and even explicitly blocked in some areas, though the UK may be getting access very soon. However, a new jailbreak tweak enables readers to use the app from anywhere in the world now without waiting or changing regions.

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Just a day after Jack Dorsey was named permanent CEO of Twitter, the social network is launching a big new feature in its app called Moments. What started as Project Lightning showcases for a lot of users the best part of Twitter: keeping caught up with in-the-moment news that you care about. The new Moments feature can be found behind the lightning bolt icon through Twitter’s mobile apps and on the web in the US.
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I’m not entirely sure why I’ve been rooting for iOS 9’s upcoming Apple News app to succeed. I’ve been a dedicated Reeder user since it debuted in the App Store, quickly dumped alternatives such as Flipboard and Pulse, and don’t need to change my daily news reading routine. But ever since Apple launched Newsstand in 2011, I’ve been waiting for a truly next-generation iOS news reading experience. Apple hasn’t just missed the boat on this; it actually sank the ship it launched, and lost a lot of talented sailors to rival companies that were developing digital book and magazine apps.

Having paid for Newsstand digital magazine subscriptions, I (like many people) was beyond disappointed when Apple abandoned Newsstand and the publishers who supported it. Newsstand was a great first step, and had the potential to become much better. Today, it seems obvious that Apple was hoping to coax Newsstand publishers over to its new app Apple News, but after testing iOS 9, I don’t think News is ready to replace Newsstand. Moreover, unless something major changes over the next few months, I’d be very surprised to see News succeed where Newsstand failed.

Whether it’s Apple or someone else (say, Amazon’s Kindle division), I’d like to see a bold company take the next big step and unify published content — at least traditional newspapers and magazines, and probably also traditional books and Internet-based publications — into a single Reading app with the best features of News, Newsstand, and iBooks. Below, I’ll explain why this would be a great next move for publishers, consumers, and Apple itself…

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