iPads and Alumni Magazines

Yesterday the wires were buzzing with Apple’s announcement that over 2 million iPads had been sold since the April 3rd launch.  Here is an excerpt from the great writers at GigaOM.

“So much for it being a niche product! Apple says it has sold 2 million iPads in the 60 days since the launch of the tablet device. It sold the first million iPads in 28 days. Indeed, it’s hard to find some of the 3G-enabled iPads in the company’s retail stores. The pace of iPad sales is way ahead of early results for the iPhone, which took 74 days to sell the first million. According to some estimates, the iPad is outselling the Mac itself.” Full article here: http://gigaom.com/2010/05/31/apple-2-million-ipads-2/

I can’t help but think about the medium-term implications for alumni magazines.  According to the Council for Advancement and Support of Education (CASE), alumni magazines are the primary way that alumni receive news about their alma mater.  Unfortunately, it is extremely expensive for schools to produce the high quality publications alumni have come to expect.  See the chart below from last year’s CASE Member Magazine Readership Survey.

It’s not a stretch to imagine a world in which alumni relations and communications professionals can provide digitally-enhanced alumni magazine content via devices like the iPad while cutting out the high production and distribution costs.

The team at EverTrue is conducting experiments with alumni magazine optimization in the coming weeks…do you think this is time well spent?  Or is it still too early?

Ever True!
Brent

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