On Thursday, Condé Nast released Vogue Cover Exclusive for the iPad. This app is the first iPad-entry for the Vogue brand in North America (British Vogue and Japanese Vogue already have apps).
The $0.99 app [iTunes link] isn’t the full issue of Vogue magazine; instead, Vogue Cover Exclusive features the full cover story and additional images, video clips and audio. Vogue says it won’t be producing the app every month but will be releasing new versions when the content is appropriate.
The inaugural issue features Lady Gaga in all her Gaga-glory. Beyond the cover story and photographs, the app also includes a behind-the-scenes video from the cover shoot and a set of audio diaries from the author of the piece.
The app, like some of Condé Nast’s other titles, uses the Adobe Digital Publishing Suite as its base. Users of the Wired iPad app will find themselves at home with the layout.
Because this is an app that is focused on the cover story and cover subject, photography is an important aspect of the experience. Fortunately, the app features great photography that has been optimized for landscape and portrait viewing.
The notable additional content in the app is the inclusion of audio diaries from Jonathan Van Meter. These diaries add context to the story and the interview process that truly give an additional sense of value in the app itself.
We think this is an interesting approach to offering digital publication content. We expect that Vogue will offer its own full-version magazine app for iPad, but in the interim, a lower-priced preview focused primarily on the content of the cover is a provocative monetization play. In the future, we would like to see Vogue utilize more exclusive content — especially by way of video — to make the $0.99 purchase more enticing.
What do you think of bite-sized iPad-focused magazine previews? Let us know.
by Christina Warren Mashable February 17, 2011
