Post mortem, the ‘individualised’ newspaper spawns an app

Apr 06, 2013 at 01:02 am by Staff


niiu, the digitally-printed ‘individualised’ newspaper launched at IfraExpo in 2009 has morphed into an iPad app.

Berliners Hendrik Tiedemann and Wanja Oberhof pioneered personal publishing with a newspaper collated from pages of European regional titles. Subscribers used a browser to selct the sections they wanted included in the following day’s paper.

But despite a “positive response” from retail and corporate customers – and innovative advertising – “error prone” print production ceased in 2011.

Now the duo have launched an app which does the same job… but publishes to a tablet.

Oberhof says readers select their personal areas of interest from a wide range of editorial content and receive their personalised news, summarised into one app.

“Unlike existing news aggregators, niiu has direct license agreements with publishers,” he says. “These contracts include the direct delivery of all publishing content to niiu, while offering publishers a new distribution channel for paid content.”

Similar to Spotify, readers pay a monthly fee and access to an entire news portfolio. Currently, it is only available as an iOS iPad app.

Tiedemann says the company will continue to develop the app and plan features including integration of social networks.

Among publications under license are Hamburger Abendblatt, Berliner Morgenpost, BZ, Die Welt, IMAGE, Tagesspiegel, Neue Zürcher Zeitung, Neues Deutschland, The European, OK, Grazia, PC World, Mac World and Fair Observer.


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