Flipboard希望拯救出版业

    去年7月份，政治新闻和评论网站Talking Points Memo（简称TPM)自豪地宣布，它“很高兴地宣布平板电脑和智能手机用户现在可以通过Flipboard阅读TPM内容。”面向移动设备的Flipboard是一款颇受欢迎的杂志风格的新闻阅读应用程序。

    然而上周，TPM创始人乔什•马歇尔通知读者，该网站内容不再继续出现于Flipboard或Google Currents应用上。他写道，这些应用“基本上欺骗了出版商”。

    出版商的态度为什么会发生如此彻底的改变呢？因为Flipboard整篇整篇转载了许多出版商的文章，而且在许多情况下（这些出版商也包括TPM），但基本上没有给这些出版商任何回报。

    至少马歇尔是这样解释这种情况的。而从目前的情况来看，他基本上说的没错。但Flipboard 首席执行官（CEO）迈克•麦克库伊表示，马歇尔的说法有些草率，显然不了解Flipboard现在的运营模式，也不了解它不久的将来会如何运作。麦克库伊表示，他俩从来没有说过话，尽管他的公司曾数次试图联系马歇尔。马歇尔对《财富》杂志（Fortune）提出的置评请求也没有作出回应。

    Flipboard以杂志的格式呈现杂志、报纸、博客和社交媒体网站的内容，读者通过在手机屏幕上滑动手指来“翻阅页面”。对于大型出版物而言，每隔几页就会显示整版广告。内容和广告的显示方式在一些方面都远远优于在互联网和许多独立应用程序上的内容和广告，而且在某些方面甚至优于阅读报纸和杂志。据麦克库伊称，Flipboard上的广告价格比普通互联网上的广告高出许多。 他说：“从一开始，我们就采取了印刷品中经过检验而可靠的各种原则，并且将它们运用于在线平台。”

    但对于陷于困境的出版业而言，这未必是一个解决方案，至少目前还不是。Flipboard上的每份出版物都必须销售自己的广告，至少目前如此（Flipboard确实会提供一些支持）。许多较小的出版商都没有能力这样做。很多出版商和广告客户还不适应Flipboard的广告格式，尽管这家公司目前还没有设立多少标准。对于能够销售广告的大型出版商而言，进驻Flipboard通常会比网络广告更加合算；对于小型出版商而言，与Flipboard合作要么“不存在”营收，要么营收很低，以至于出版商获得的唯一真正繁荣好处就是他们获得的“曝光。”

    而正是“曝光”这个角度激怒了马歇尔。发表了最初那篇有点粗野的博客文章的几天之后，他通过一系列的修改和补充，进一步阐述了他不满的原因。马歇尔承认，有关Flipboard欺骗出版商的说法可能措辞不当（虽然他确实再次使用了这个词），但他坚持认为，Flipboard对出版商不利，因为它向他们这些出版商网站提供的只是“影响范围”和“品牌知名度”。在Flipboard上阅读TPM内容后，用户就不会再访问TPM网站。虽然网站广告收入很低，但对于出版商来说至少是一笔收入。他写道：“‘影响范围’不能当饭吃，而我们也无法用‘品牌知名度’来支付员工工资。”他承认，“没有人逼迫TPM或其他网站与这些服务平台合作，而且那些服务平台也没有真的在毫不隐讳地说谎。”

    很难知道他认为他们可能以隐含的方式说些什么谎。没有任何迹象表明Flipboard对自己做了不准确的描述。麦克库伊说，他理解马歇尔的不满，但他也表示，与Flipboard合作很可能帮助（而不是损害）TPM，因为每月只有约三万的读者。不知道TPM的广告销售价格是多少，但很可能是每千次展现量不到1美元。而且通过Flipboard阅读TPM内容的用户未必意味着他们现在正在阅读TPM网站。已有部分用户留言，明确表示不会访问TPM网站。因此，就算只是为了“影响范围”，TPM可能也值得继续留在Flipboard上。

    In July of last year, the political news and opinion site Talking Points Memo proudly declared that it was "excited to announce that tablet and smartphone users can now read TPM on Flipboard," a popular, magazine-style news-reading app for mobile devices.

    Last week, TPM founder Josh Marshall informed readers that the site's content no longer appears on either Flipboard or on the competing Google Currents (GOOG) app. The apps "are basically scams against the publishers," he wrote.

    Why the total change of heart? Because Flipboard takes whole articles from publishers and -- in many cases, including TPMs -- gives those publishers essentially nothing in return.

    At least, that's how Marshall interprets the situation. And as things stand for now, he's essentially right. But Flipboard CEO Mike McCue says Marshall jumped the gun, and that he apparently doesn't understand how Flipboard works, or how it will work in the near future. The two have never spoken, McCue says, despite his company's several attempts to reach out to Marshall, who also has not responded to Fortune's requests for comment.

    Flipboard displays the content of magazines, newspapers, blogs, and social media sites in a magazine-like format. Readers flip through the pages with a swipe. For bigger publications, full-page ads appear every few pages. Both the content and the ads are in a format that is in several ways vastly superior to reading on the web and many standalone apps -- and in some ways even better than reading a magazine or newspaper. The ads sell for considerably more money than web ads sell for, according to McCue. "From the beginning, we have taken the tried-and-true principles of print and applied them online," he says.

    But it's not necessarily a solution for the troubled publishing business, at least not yet. Each publication on Flipboard must sell its own ads, at least for the time being (the company does offer some support). Many smaller publications are not equipped to do so. And the ads are in a format that many publishers and advertisers are not yet used to dealing with -- there are few standards yet. For bigger publications that can sell ads, a presence on Flipboard might often be a much better deal than web ads are. For smaller ones, revenues are either nonexistent or so small that the only real benefit for publishers is the "exposure" they get.

    The exposure angle is what irked Marshall. In the days after his initial, somewhat churlish blog post, he expanded on his complaint through a series of edits and additions to the original piece. Marshall acknowledged that "scam" might have been an ill-chosen word (though he did use it again), but he stuck to his assertion that Flipboard is "bad for publishers" because all it offers sites like his is "reach" and "brand awareness." People who read TPM on Flipboard aren't reading it on his site, where the ad revenues are feeble, but at least they're revenues. "You can't eat 'reach' and we can't pay salaries with 'brand awareness'," he wrote. He did acknowledge that "no one forces TPM or other sites to work with these services, and [those services are] not really explicitly lying."

    It's hard to know what he thinks they might be implicitly lying about. There's no indication that Flipboard has misrepresented itself. McCue says he understands Marshall's complaint, but he also says that TPM's presence on Flipboard probably helped more than hurt the publication, since TPM only had about 30,000 monthly readers on the service. It's not known how much ads on TPM sell for, but it's probably less than a buck per thousand impressions. And the fact that someone had been reading TPM on Flipboard doesn't necessarily mean they are now reading the website. Some commenters have explicitly said they wouldn't. So maybe it was worth being there just for the "reach" after all.