Former TechCrunch Writer Reveals Grande Tablet Plans
When Paul Carr does something, he never spares us a little added flare. Well known for providing some of the more colorful posts on TechCrunch, the writer took his final bow on the AOL-owned blog and moved on to steer his own ship at NSFW Corporation.
Together with what Paul describes as ‘The Best Team In The World’ the NSFW Corporation will be a new kind of publishing company, the kind that creates content purposed solely for the tablets out there. All of them, without prejudice, from the Kindle Fire to the iPad.
His theory is that these devices have made reading fun again and that for this joy, readers are prepared to pay a price. He’s so sure in fact that he’s willing to bet a large amount of investment capital on it. A so begins The New Gambit, described by Carr as “the Economist as written by the Daily Show.” Striving to deliver the week’s news in a way that is clever enough to make you laugh while still remaining relevant and legitimate, we will have to take a wait-and-see approach with this one. Carr is certainly colorful enough, but does he have the chops?
A lot of would-be publishers are likely paying attention to this one. With The New Gambit being available only on tablet style devices and only being read by subscription with no content being made available on the web or anywhere else, the farm is being bet on whether people are prepared to pay for quality information and entertainment… provided that’s what this publication ends up delivering.
There are practical considerations. Some tablets don’t sport color-screens for instance, others use touch-screen gestures while some still use more manual buttons and controls. Will smartphones be included at some point? Are they wise to exclude delivery over the web to reach users on laptops and other computers? Will readers embrace content that isn’t laced with hyperlinks?
Apple rarely bets on the long-shot, so you can count on the fact that they believe in micro-publishing and branding content specifically for mobile devices. Their implementation of Newsstand supports this fully and in the coming months we will see how well it does. It certainly offers a convenience for reading news content in a more traditional yet progressive way.
For $0.99 an issue, will you subscribe?