Ever since Jeff Bezos bought the Washington Post, there’s been speculation about how he would tie it in with Amazon. Now we know: Owners of Kindle Fire tablets are getting a full 6-month digital subscription to the newspaper for free.
The Washington Post has announced that its new app is exclusively for Kindle Fire owners, at least for now. It will come loaded onto new devices, and is already available for existing users in the app store. For the first six months, access is entirely free. For another six months, users will have to pay $US1. Then, it will turn into a monthly subscription. The Post explains that “the monthly rate is still under discussion, but Post officials said it would most likely be between $US3 and $US5 a month.”
The previously rumoured app is “aimed at building a wider national and international audience for the newspaper,” so it lacks regional news and focuses on the wider picture instead. The bulk of the app’s content will be updated twice a day — at 5am and 5pm — with breaking news injected as and when required. The design is supposed to allow you to flick through a little like you were reading a magazine, pinching stories to read them in isolation. It promises to be a pretty slick experience.
The app will apparently appear on Android an iOS in 2015. (We’d guess, actually, in exactly six months time.) It all makes sense of course: Jeff Bezos is slowly trying to become the source of all the content you consume. It’s done it with books, it’s slowly doing it with video, and now it’s trying its hand with news. Welcome to the world according to Bezos. [Amazon App Store, Amazon, Washington Post]