I’ve been playing around with “The Daily” for about an hour. It’s hardly enough time to give a full review, which I’ll write in a few days. But some initial thoughts:
“The Daily” reads like a magazine, essentially. It’s a hybrid magazine-tabloid-digital product. The writing is good. There are some interactives, but The Daily needs to work on them a bit (and one I couldn’t get to work). The video reports are very good.
Best of all, Verizon is sponsoring a two-week free trail of “The Daily.” And it’s not one of those “Give us your credit card and we’ll keep charging you” free deals, too. Once you download The Daily, it only gives you the day’s next edition if you open it. Otherwise, you can throw out the app and never worry about being charged.
I’d like to see more social integration: which stories my friends are reading and a “Flipboard” way to import stories from my Twitter and Facebook feeds would be two good updates.
Still, I subscribe to a couple of digital magazines and “The Daily” doesn’t feel substantially different, apart from the benefit of getting information… well… daily.
The price is reasonable, and this will be the first major test of whether people will pay for mobile news content.
