The NY Times now has four iPhone apps: its main site, real estate, crosswords and a new city and entertainment guide “The Scoop.” In my relatively quick perusal of it The Scoop seems to be a very useful New York restaurant, bar and entertainment directory.
It uses the paper’s editorial content and selectively extracts those listings and reviews that are relevant to the app, also taking advantage of location-awareness on the iPhone. Here are some screens:
This kind of app will give UGC sites a genuine run for their money. And, as you can also see, there’s great ad inventory for contextually and locally relevant advertisers — including rich media.
Other newspaper publishers could equally create mobile apps along these lines. For example the SF Chronicle should build an app around its popular “top 100” restaurants guide.
June 4, 2010 at 8:02 pm
as an aside Greg… it may help newspapers to offer their advertisers use of an integrated reputation management tool on their site.
June 4, 2010 at 8:07 pm
Indeed . . . I believe that’s already started.
June 10, 2010 at 12:34 pm
[…] See related: NY Times’ Scoop App a Model for Others […]