'The Daily' Launches for iPad

Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. today held a media event in New York City which coincided with the launch of the company’s ‘The Daily’ iPad exclusive digital news publication. Less app and more digital newspaper, The Daily features fresh content on—you guessed it—a daily basis. News Corp. claims the publication “has the depth and quality of a magazine but is delivered daily like a newspaper and updated in real-time like the web.”

Featuring over 100 pages of fresh content every day, ‘The Daily’ contains stories, photos, video, and audio in addition to customizable pages—all of which take advantage of the iPad’s unique multi-touch technology. In part a fusion of a traditional news sources with the interface and aesthetic of an iPad app, ‘The Daily’ features high quality media that can not only be interacted with, but customized, saved for later viewing, and shared through a variety of social outlets including Facebook and Twitter.

In addition to being the first publication of its kind, The Daily brings a new “In-App Subscriptions” payment model to the App Store. As announced by Eddy Cue, Apple’s VP of Internet Services, ‘The Daily is available for either $0.99 per week, or $39.99 per year. Regardless of the pricing tier selected, subscriptions take place, and are managed through iTunes and a linked iTunes account. Subscriptions are either automatically debited on a weekly basis ($0.99 option) or once annually ($39.99 option) once a user subscribes. As an incentive to try the publication, Verizon is offering all iPad owners a free two week trial period.

Though ‘The Daily’ is arguably the most revolutionary publication to hit the App Store, there are plenty of existing iPad specific versions of popular magazines such as Condé Nast’s Wired. Currently, magazines such as this do not feature “In-App Subscriptions” as the feature first debuted today. In a Q&A session following the media event, Cue mentioned Apple has opened recurring billing to other magazines and that “an announcement” is coming soon.

To download The Daily, click here.