Posted by Bill Densmore
For months, news publishers have been debating whether Apple will allow them to maintain their subscriber account relationships when the publishers start launching “apps” which run on the iPad. Today Apple spoke in what seems to be fairly clear language. While there are still some uncertainties, it appears the basic philosphy Apple’s articulating is this: You can keep your users, but we want to keep ours, too. The bottom line: A half a loaf for Apple, a half a loaf for publishers and a full loaf for consumers. What we are beginning to see is the emergence of a Information Valet economy, where the coming battle is over who owns users. In that environment, what’s now needed is a method for sharing users.
Now, to parse what Apple announced. This quote from the news release, suggests there are circumstances in which an in-app subscription authentication can complete to an outside iTunes Store process and will be OK’d by Apple:
From today’s Apple news release:
“Publishers must provide their own authentication process inside the app for subscribers that have signed up outside of the app. However, Apple does require that if a publisher chooses to sell a digital subscription separately outside of the app, that same subscription offer must be made available, at the same price or less, to customers who wish to subscribe from within the app. In addition, publishers may no longer provide links in their apps (to a web site, for example) which allow the customer to purchase content or subscriptions outside of the app.”
The last sentence leads one to believe a publisher may not be able to sign up a brand new digital subscriber (as opposed to an existing print subscriber) to a digital-only offer using a third-party registration/subscription process which starts in-app (in a free app) but completes via an outside-the-app process.
It seems to be saying that the publisher’s subscription process has to occur entirely outside of the app, and cannot be even innitiated within app — and that this scenario would **not** be blocked by Apple:
- Publisher signs up a new subscriber to a digital-only offer in a process and solicitation which occurs outside of any app.
- It could, for example, occur using the Safari browser on the iPad.
- After the subscriber is all signed up, the subscriber launches the iTunes store and downloads a **free** app.
- Upon launching the app, the user is authenticated within the app to a third-party authentication service run for the publisher (such as Clickshare). If a valid user, the user gets access to content inside the app.
- The pricing and terms of the offer, above, have to be no better than what an Apple iTunes Store customer could get by subscribing to the same content directly via iTunes.
In this scenario, Apple does not interfere with publishers’ own intentions to integrate their customer relationships across multiple platforms — for better content or advertising sales. But Apple at the same time insists that it is not going to force their **own** iTunes Store customers to begin a new relationship with a publisher if they don’t want to. And to make sure they are not enticed, Apple is saying they would allow a publisher **on Apple’s platform** to make a digital offer any better than what a user can get via an existing relationship with the iTunes Store.
It does seem that if a publisher has a print subscriber, and wants to give them access to a digital iPad offer, and wants to authenticate them to the publisher’s subscription/authentication database out-of-app, that will be approved.
You can also read TechCrunch’s take, as well as Josh Benton’s at Nieman Lab.
For newspaper and magazine publishers this is historic. Their vertical integration and customer control is being challenged. In 1994, when we started what became Clickshare, we called that “hijacking the user base.” Apple surely understands this — because they now have a user base of over 100 million paying customers to protect — and so today’s policy shows they are understanding where publishers are coming from.
But it shows where this is all going, and why there is going to be a need for legislation and transparency — and the need for the Information Valet — a trusted service which helps you manage your persona and subscriptions. It’s not hard to imagine Apple positioning themselves as the defender of privacy and personal against evil publishers who want
to monetize it all. Or maybe the other way around — we’ll see!
Also, notice that Eddie from Apple talks about iPad “customers” not users. Apple very much regards every iPad owner as **their customer.**
UPDATE:
For more than a decade,Clickshare has been providing exactly the services Google announced — and more — and **all** the subscriber usage data is owned by the publisher, notjust name, email address and zip code. Current customers include the New York Times Co., at Worcester; McClatchy at Lexington, Ky., and Journal RegisterCo. in Michigan — in addition to other major publishers.
This decade-long history and customer list makes Clickshare the most experienced ongoingprovider of user authentication, subscription access control and credit-card gateway services to news organizations online. Clickshare serves over 3million **registered** users on behalf of, as agent for, its clients — representing over 2 milllion print circulation. Clickshare’s revenue cut is inthe low single digits, not 10-30 percent.
It charges setup fees and annual maintenance fees reflecting the fact that significant integration has to bedone for publisher content and customer databases to interact with the authentication and payment system. Publishers will have these costs in any event,internally or outsourced, whether they sign up with Google or Clickshare.
One significant difference at Clickshare vs. Google: The customer is not taken to a third-party registration interface, but stays on the publisher’s own website to sign up; and the publisher absolutely ownsall customer data.
Bill Densmore is founder of Clickshare Service Corp., and was a 2008-2009 fellow at the Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Institute. He is president of CircLabs Inc., a company co-owned by the University of Missouri which is working on personalization technologies which benefit newspapers and their users.
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