The Globe app for Apple Watch
For The Globe and Mail, there was never any question about developing an app for the Apple Watch. It started work on the app back in December, well before Apple showed off the fancy new hardware at its March conference.
Angus Frame, VP of digital media at the Globe, said there were a couple reasons the publisher was so keen to get on readers’ wrists.
“What we hope it will do is create a more natural real-time connection between the reader and The Globe and Mail,” he said. “The way the watch works — sitting on your wrist, vibrating a little bit when something happens, coming to life as you angle it towards your face — all of that is consistent with a trusted source, letting you know that something’s happened that you need to know about.”
The Globe app’s core functionality is around live news alerts. Wearers get editorially curated news updates much the way they get texts or Twitter notifications, with a faint buzzing on their wrist. They can either read the alert on the watch, or save it to their iPhone to read on the larger screen.
Frame said the app took only six weeks to develop — a breeze by the standards of experience design — thanks to The Globe‘s existing codebase for iOS devices. He referred to Apple’s trio of mobile devices, the iPhone, iPad and Apple Watch, as “the iOS platform,” saying The Globe has made a heavy investment in creating an integrated experience across all three screens.
“We’ve done some interesting data analysis, and it’s very consistent that the more platforms a reader uses to engage with us…the more committed they are to us, the more time they spend and the more likely they are to subscribe,” he said. “When a new platform comes out that gives us one more chance to hold hands with our reader, we’re going to take advantage of that.”
The free app — which will be available to all Apple Watch users, not just The Globe subscribers — has already been approved by the Apple app store, and will be available for download April 24 when the Apple Watch launches in Canada. A handful of Canadian brands have made similar launch partner commitments, including theScore, Air Canada and Tangerine Bank.
Frame said at the time of its launch The Globe and Mail app would not carry ads, but will be more focused on driving engagement to its mobile and desktop site. He didn’t, however, rule out the possibility.
“I expect there will be opportunities for really good, creative conversations with forward-thinking advertisers, around what they can do with this platform with The Globe that’s unique and hasn’t been done before,” he said. “Needless to say, this is a screen size that doesn’t support a lot of our traditional notions of advertising, so it’s going to be one that we need to understand and figure out how to make it work.”
He said The Globe is very interested in how the watch takes the personal nature of mobile one step further. Though the app currently delivers the same stream of news alerts to all users, Frame said he’s excited about the possibility of customizing news alerts based on users’ stated interests and predictive algorithms.
Though The Globe doesn’t have any specific plans for personalization on the watch, Frame said it’s a big priority for the organization, and that it does have some related features coming out for the web that may later be integrated into the watch.
