While working on her aforelinked article about Condé Nast and its iPad-publishing woes, Nitasha Tiku interviewed Khoi Vinh. The interview was transcribed and is definitely worth a read.
In one of his comments, Khoi articulates precisely what I think most of us would agree is the one of the core problems with print magazines that are trying to make it in digital. They are trying to add value by adding extra features instead of adding value by focusing on delivering their great editorial content in a way that is easy to get to and easy to share:
People want the core content. They’re not going to say no to the extras, but most of the time they’re not going to use them and most of the time they’re not going to care about them. Netflix is a company that totally gives you just the core content. They decided to do this after a decade of all this value-add in DVDs thinking that’s what sells stuff. Then Netflix demonstrates, people just don’t care about the extras. That to me is part of the print-centric approach.