Economist.com is about to launch a paid-for iPhone app to accompany its global business-school league-table data and its annual spin-off print magazine Which MBA?. The online MBA data is free but a search feature that creates personalised rankings is for subscribers only — the iPhone app, developed by Zone Content, also has the search feature but will be available to non-subscribers for a one-off fee. It’s the Economist’s first mobile app and a clear sign of the company’s approach to monetising online data.
Ron Diorio, Economist.com’s US-based VP for product and community development, tells paidContent:UK that readers won’t necessarily choose either the magazine or the app: “We’re happy with being able to give people options: if you buy the magazine, you don’t have access to the tool online, but the magazine is a research tool. So we don’t see this as an ‘either-or’.”
No price has been set so far, but Diorio expects it to be similar to a single copy of Which MBA? — this year’s edition is £8.95 — so the app could be a genuine money-spinner. Diorio points to Economist research that says would-be MBA students research their prospective college for 18 to 24 months, which begs the question of why the company didn’t consider giving the app a paid subscription access model instead of a one-off fee to extract even more cash from the investment bankers of tomorrow.
What else is Diorio working on? How about a general Economist.com app with news and comment? “We’re constantly reviewing what products would work best for users and particularly subscribers. We’ve had lots of discussions about how that could be explored and we have lots of ideas.” That’s all he’ll say on that, but he adds that Economist strategy has moved a long way from “just pushing out some RSS feeds to be rendered”.
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