William Randolph Hearst is probably rolling over in his grave. Via MediaPost:
Hearst Corp. last week unveiled its “let a thousand flowers bloom” approach to creating digital content for the iPhone. The magazine publisher plans to churn out thousands of iPhone applications focused on niche topics within categories such as celebrities, food, hobbies, and sports.
….Hearst told The Wall Street Journal it can turn out the apps at low cost by using a similar template for each and linking to information from outside sources.
The publisher is paying for rights to photos but not other content pulled from traditional news outlets and blogs. The Angelina Jolie app, for instance, used a story from E! about why she didn’t attend the Academy Awards and other material from the gossip blog Bossip. So the apps are, in effect, mini-content aggregators, drawing from different sites around Web.
Wow. Times really are tough for publishers.
#1 by Dave M. on March 16th, 2010
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Wasn’t there talk on the web about Apple cracking down on such apps? They really need to. The biggest offender (that I know of) is Brighthouse labs with well over 4,300 apps and growing.
The least Apple could do is get the developers to put the apps into a single app that allows in-app purchases to gain the content. This way, us patrons of the AppStore don’t have to see hundreds of stupid apps like these appear.
#2 by Steve on March 29th, 2010
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What about Iceberg Reader? they have over 8700 apps.