Hearst gets into iPhone apps with LMK

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Hearst gets into iPhone apps with LMK

New digital service called "Let Me Know" is latest bid to preserve paid-for content and mobile brands

By CAROLINE GABRIEL

Published: 14 March, 2010

READ MORE: App Store | Mobile Content | eBook

Along with Rupert Murdoch's News Corp, media conglomerate Hearst has been the most active in embracing emerging mobile devices and apps platforms, to try to preserve revenues from its publications. It has announced its own e-reader and a range of ways to enhance the paid-for experience of newspapers, and now it has unveiled about 60 applications for the iPhone and iPod Touch.

These are the first apps in a new digital service called LMK (Let Me Know). Apps are priced from 99 cents and each focus on a single topic, such as a sports player or musician, providing a stream of constantly updated news, images and alerts. Once again, this sees Hearst expanding the ways it delivers content, and keeping a controlling place in the value chain, as well as insisting that its offerings carry at least a small fee.

According to The Wall Street Journal, Hearst plans to roll out thousands of LMK applications in the months ahead, each of them costing only a few hundred dollars to create, as they are usually based on a common template. Hearst told the WSJ that it has five full-time staff working on LMK, who search out the best sources of information on each topic and feed it into the template.

George Kliavkoff, EVP of entertainment and syndication at the media giant, said the firm is exploring alternative pricing models, such as subscriptions, and will eventually introduce advertising support too.

All this indicates how the content owners are fighting back against the pressure from free web-based media, and the fully ad-driven approach of giants like Google, who argue that incremental revenues will come not from consumers of content but other links in the chain, such as advertisers.

But Hearst and others think they can tempt consumers to spend their own dollars by offering a superior content experience - through putting programs into the app stores that are more attractive than free alternatives; or by creating a high end reading experience, notably on e-readers. Murdoch has declared war on Google for offering his company's subscription content through its search engine, and is a major supporter of e-readers. And Hearst will soon launch the Skiff Reader, using a Sprint wireless connection and taking on the large-size Amazon Kindle DX, optimized for newspapers. The Skiff will have have an 11.5-inch, grayscale touchscreen that can download material from its own online store, which will be geared to full-layout newspapers and magazines.

Apple, of course, is readying a bookstore for its forthcoming iPad. Tablets are another source of hope for the publishing industry, and Apple has been widely expected to form closer ties with media giants like Hearst and News Corp to offer exclusives on its new device. It is promising that its iBookstore will offer far easier discovery than its App Store, for users hunting for titles - important if its experience is to rival the very simple approach of Amazon's Kindle Store. The iBookstore will see its titles divided into over 150 sub-categories, grouped between 20-30 top level shelves. The iBooks app for iPad, which includes iBookstore, will be available as a free download from the App Store in conjunction with the device's US release. Publisher deals include Hachette Book Group, HarperCollins, Macmillan, Penguin and Simon & Schuster.