App-etizers, Mar. 12: 50,000 iPads Sold in Two Hours App-etizers, Mar. 16: LoKast Brings P2P Media Sharing to iPhones
Hearst's Cynical New Strategy: App Spam
By Kevin Kelleher
Posted Friday, March 12, 2010 - 6:36pm
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Hearst Corp. has app fever. The media giant has developed 70 apps for the iPhone and plans to unleash thousands more, according to the Wall Street Journal. Some are praising the company for finding a cheap way to subsidize its journalism. But I think it could bring Hearst its share of complications and disappointment.
The legion of apps is being pumped out of Hearst’s LMK division. (That’s short for “let me know”—as in, let me know what that silly name is supposed to mean.) They are mostly niche apps covering everything from Metallica to cupcakes to the Red Sox to Barbie. The beauty of it—from the company’s narrow perspective, not so much from consumers'—is that it can all be done on the cheap. As the Journal noted,
Hearst said it can create its informational apps for just a few hundred dollars of employee time. Most follow a similar template and link to information, making them less complicated than, say, a game application. LMK's five full-time employees simply dig up the best sources of information on each topic area and feed the sources into a common template.
Hearst pays for rights to photos but not for the other content, which comes from traditional news outlets and blogs, keeping its costs down. Later, Hearst expects to add statistical information for sports teams and alerts to notify people about the latest goings-on of their favorite celebrity or team.
So far so good. But problem No. 1: These apps aren’t free. If, as a Hearst executive cockily told the Journal, “we've always trained people that everything on the mobile device costs money," I must have failed basic training, along with almost every other iPhone owner I can think of. When I see a paid app, I always take a minute to look for a free alternative, and I usually find one.
Hearst says it’s sold hundreds of these apps without any marketing or promotion. But think about it: 70 apps have been downloaded a grand total of several hundred times. That’s what, five or six downloads per app? Hardly a success.
