“Controversial Mahalo head Jason Calacanis heard from a ‘major publisher’ that Apple CEO Steve Jobs has acquiesced to giving out an unspecified amount of customer data after the publisher refused to offer subscription content without circulation info,” Electronista reports. “It’s not known if any other publishers put down a similar ultimatum.”
Electronista reports, “Few other details are available, and the rumor contains a level of doubt. Calacanis has a mixed track record on rumors and made a joke iPad leak in late January that even some major publications falsely interpreted as fact. Here, however, he made it clear he was serious, and leaks from Jobs’ recent meetings with New York City publishers have been commonplace.”
Read more in the full article here.
Sounds sensible. Why wouldn’t Apple agree to this?
Whatever.
All they will know is that someone name Sirius Li is subscribing.
As long as I am asked whether I want to share that data when I hit the big red “subscribe” button, I have no problem with this. I want the magazines I read to tailor themselves to me. They can’t do that if they know nothing about me.
There seems to be a lot of hysteria over the idea that Apple would share info with the publishers. The reality is that publishers MUST know their demographics to be properly relevant to their readers. These demographics and circ numbers are audited to support advertising rates. If I’m Revlon, I am going to want to see evidence that the readers of your publication are in my buying demographic before I pay for to advertise. There should be know surprise that publishers will demand this information, and there is nothing sinister about it.
As long as the customer is made aware of the fact that this will take place… well, I can’t pretend I’ll like it, but at least I’d be told, which is better than them doing it on the sly without telling me at all.
Logic
@Gabriel and OctoberMac
Every time you’ve ever subscribed for a magazine or newspaper, you’ve provided information about yourself in one degree or another. Apple isn’t going to share your credit card info, but other demographic info such as gender, geographic location, and age, at the very least is info that publishers need to do business. Few people have issues with answering these questions until someone scares us into mistrusting. I’ll go first: I’m a male, living in Southern California and I am 54 years old.
Calacanis is a troll and “hit-whore”. Avoid at all costs!
like I said on another site, of all of the tools in the tech community toolbox, Calacanis is the biggest of them all.
Publishers collect this information already themselves. If they go the iPad route, they will still need it, but through Apple instead of them doing it themselves.
They need this information. This is nothing new. How else do they know what to write to keep their audience or how much to charge for advertising?
“…after the publisher refused to offer subscription content without circulation info.”
Then Apple should tell the publisher to suck a** . They’ll come crawling back after the iPad takes off like a friggin’ rocket; just like Warner music did with the iPod.
You can’t trust a word from that scumbag. He’ll do anything for attention, like Dvorak on steroids.
Calacanis the skanky web hero strikes again…
As a magazine publisher myself, I am concerned that we might not be able to “own” our magazine’s subscriber list. Although it isn’t clear what Apple have in mind for Publishers, especially niche ones like mine – without our readership base we are nothing – and this is what we spend decades building up
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There’s no way I am going to let all that work go down the bog for nothing.
“Interesting Time as Confucious say.
Some info should be shared in order to maximize the value I get from a publication.
Some should be controlled – where I can opt in, or not.
I do not want a one time purchase or even a subscription to a magazine resulting in getting flooded with “junk mail” either real or virtual. That is a very fast way to destroy my user experience.
The potential to mine information to fine tune the digital “me” is huge, and can result in a huge loss of privacy – I am kind of glad that my computer company “Apple” is ran by a guy obsessed with privacy.