Categories: OLD Media Moves

What’s behind Forbes new mobile app

Lucinda Southern of Digiday interviewed Forbes chief product officer Lewis Dvorkin about its new mobile application, which was rolled out this week.

Here is an excerpt:

Why did you choose to design the product this way?
I don’t believe in native content apps. The average American has 1.5 news apps; it’s never going to be Forbes. But this is an app-like experience; it’s fast and visual. Forbes.com may be dead five in years. That’s hyperbole, but the reality is so many readers will find us somewhere else. Right now, the default for reporters is to write a story. I want there to be five default positions. I want it to be as easy to write a text story as to create a graphic, a GIF, a photo, so reporters need to think differently. But it’s going to take a while; change isn’t easy.
How do you monetize there?
Those cards are built for content marketing and native advertising, not display. I hope I never see a display ad in that card based structure. When you get to the story, that’s OK, but not when you are swiping through.

Read more here.

Chris Roush

Chris Roush was the dean of the School of Communications at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Connecticut. He was previously Walter E. Hussman Sr. Distinguished Professor in business journalism at UNC-Chapel Hill. He is a former business journalist for Bloomberg News, Businessweek, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Tampa Tribune and the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. He is the author of the leading business reporting textbook "Show me the Money: Writing Business and Economics Stories for Mass Communication" and "Thinking Things Over," a biography of former Wall Street Journal editor Vermont Royster.