Briefly, the app will deliver news customized to a reader’s tastes – a genre perhaps best typified now by Flipboard. AOL‘s Editions, based on its video teaser, uses icons that represent these interests – sports, fashion, business news – which the user then arranges in the order he or she prefers. News from these categories, culled from various sources, is then displayed in a magazine-like format.
AOL calls it in its video (warning: upcoming politically correct paraphrase) the app to read while you are in the bathroom. Even scatological-humor adverse viewers dub the video funny.
With this video, AOL identified a new niche of digital content users – people who like to read while in the bathroom. This is only easy to do in retrospect, usually after another company plows the way. A quick look at 1-800 Flowers illustrates.
Finding an Entirely New Niche
A few months ago Response Magazine took a look at how 1-800 Flowers was able to establish itself – and even carve out a new role – in the mobile commerce space.
Essentially it identified an unmet need for mobile consumers – perhaps one they didn’t even realize they had. Called On-the-Go Shoppers, they are people who like/need reminders for events such as birthdays or anniversaries along with a easy way to acknowledge the day, via, of course a mobile order for a bouquet of flowers. 1-800 Flowers sends timely reminders to these people’s mobile phones about the event along with a mobile option to purchase.
Facebook in the Bathroom
Back to AOL. Digital media is, if nothing else, addicted to analytics, statistics and surveys to see how, when, where and who is eyeballing the content. It is the heart of the channel’s advertising business model.
So it should come as no great surprise that AIS Media recently surveyed Facebook readers to find that nearly one-third (27 percent) of respondents reported that they read Facebook while in the bathroom.
It doesn’t stop there: among those that answered “yes”, AIS Media’s survey found that Facebook usage on mobile devices in the bathroom was higher among women with 54.4% of female respondents admitting to doing it compared to only 45.6% of male respondents. Usage in the bathroom was greatest among the 30-49 age category.
“Mission Accomplished”
“Look, folks are engaging with social media in all kinds of manner, they take their phone everywhere and the bathroom is no exception,” says Thomas Harpointner, CEO of AIS.
It’s an important reminder for app developers, he says: “Content on these platforms are reaching people in ways that other mediums, like on television, simply cannot.”
As for the Editions video, Harpointner says mission accomplished. “It’s funny, it hits a nerve with people and that means they’ll remember it.” With 10 billion apps out there, it doesn’t get much better than that for an app developer.
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