Although online readers sometimes complain that printed news is yesterday's news, there's something nice about the holistic view a daily paper casts on the last 24 hours of events â€" a view Financial Times readers say they want alongside the live-updating experience offered by the FT.com and its apps for mobile and tablet devices.
Come Wednesday, that's exactly what readers of the FT's web app will get. An update to the iPad version of the app now allows readers to toggle between two modes, "Live" and "Morning," via a bottom navigation bar. The former mirrors the frequently updated arrangement of the website; the latter, the static structure of the morning paper.
The bottom bar also allows users to quickly navigate other sections (by thumbnail), conduct searches and refresh the app. It also links to a new section called "My FT," where users can view recommended reads based on previous reading history, and access their clippings and personal portfolios (see below).
"It's an opportunity to put everything that people want, that's personalized to them, in one place," Robert Shrimsley, managing editor of the FT.com, explained during a phone interview last week.
Article pages are no longer paginated, instead following a two-column structure. On the left appears the main photo, headline and byline along with links to other articles in the section; on the right, the text of the article. Swiping no longer takes you to the next page, but to the next article â€" a technique that keeps readers reading further and longer, New York Times digital design director Ian Adelman once observed. Stories are now accompanied by multimedia elements, including videos and slideshows, where available.
Users of the app will also find a new index hub for FT blogs, as well as two new sections for weekly publications FT Money and FTfm.
There's also room for more ads. For the first time, advertisers can run display ads on all article pages, as well as full-page interstitials between article and section pages, units that will hopefully boost the paper's mobile ad revenue, which doesn't yet match the size of its audience. Although nearly a third of traffic to FT.com comes from mobile devices, mobile accounts for 10% of digital ad sales, and a much smaller fraction of overall ad revenue.
For now, the features mentioned above are only available for iPad readers, but they will soon be introduced to readers on iPhone, Android and Windows 8 devices as well.
I asked Shrimsley what other features he most wants to bring to the app. "We would still like to integrate interactives in a better way," he said, adding that it's also important to bring comments into the app "within a reasonable space of time." (He declined to specify whether "a reasonable space of time" meant this year or next.)
Although it offers native apps for Android and Windows 8 devices, the FT no longer has native apps for Apple's iPhone and iPad. The paper launched a native iPhone app in July 2009, followed by a native edition for the iPad in May 2010, but decided to pull both apps in 2011 after Apple announced that it would not share with publishers valuable information (names, e-mail addresses, demographic data, etc.) of readers who purchased subscriptions through iTunes.
Since then, the FT has invested in building out a web app for iOS readers, designing as native an experience as possible. Readers can add the web app to their home screens alongside other apps, like so:
Beyond iOS, Android and Windows 8, the FT is also available as a mobile-optimized website for BlackBerry and other mobile platforms. As part of a broader strategy to bring its product to readers everywhere, the FT is working to let subscribers access all of its content through Flipboard as well, a spokesperson said.
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