{"id":1806,"date":"2015-08-28T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2015-08-27T22:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wwwneu.strehle.de\/tim\/weblog\/archives\/2015\/08\/28\/1568-2\/"},"modified":"2025-07-31T22:00:10","modified_gmt":"2025-07-31T20:00:10","slug":"1568-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.strehle.de\/tim\/weblog\/archives\/2015\/08\/28\/1568-2\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201ciTunes for news\u201d \u2013 first impressions of Blendle in Germany"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"\/<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You have probably heard of Blendle<\/a>, the promising \u201ciTunes for News\u201d startup from the Netherlands that\u2019s backed by the NYT and Axel Springer<\/a>. They\u2019re launching in Germany<\/a> on September 14th. I\u2019ve been a fan of the Blendle idea for a long time: effortlessly buying print articles from a central \u201conline kiosk\u201d, with an equally easy refund option if the article wasn\u2019t worth its money. So I was extra happy to be able to try out the beta version. Some first impressions:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The conversational onboarding process<\/a> is phenomenally well executed. (Just what I expected after reading about Blendle product manager Rick Pastoor\u2019s public 30 onboardings in 30 days<\/a> project.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I found almost no glitches in the beta; just two Dutch-labeled buttons in the otherwise fully localized credit card payment process \u2013 and some missing words in articles, as reported by Felix Schwenzel<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Like other beta testers, I dislike the fact that a link to an article on Blendle (i.e. a Blendle link shared on Twitter) immediately shows the full article and makes me pay for it. Yes, I can easily get a refund, but it makes me think twice before I click on a Blendle link, and it keeps me from sharing Blendle articles. Please show an article preview instead, ideally in the context of the printed page so I get a better feel of what to expect.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I often don\u2019t know what kind of article to expect, because except for the browse view that shows previews overlaid on the newspaper or magazine page, I have no idea how long the article is from looking at its preview. Please include an indicator of the article length (number of words, or reading time). And the publication date.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What I find problematic is that Blendle makes me pay for articles which I can read on the publication\u2019s site for free. I totally understand the reasoning<\/a>, and I don\u2019t mind paying some extra pennies to save journalism from time to time, but it\u2019s still kind of sobering to come across the free article on, say, zeit.de after I paid for it on Blendle. And to me, it\u2019s a hurdle for sharing \u2013 I don\u2019t want my friends complain about me making them pay for something they could have had for free. (Users love products that make them feel smart<\/a>, not dumb.) Blendle, please make publishers send you a daily-updated list of articles that they\u2019re giving away for free, and link them from your article preview (\u201cRead it on zeit.de\u201d).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Finally, something I\u2019m dreaming of: Topic centric news presentation. Here\u2019s an older blog post (in German) outlining the idea<\/a>. Articles I\u2019m willing to pay for are often about a topic I\u2019d like to read more about, or even want to monitor to get notified when new articles appear. (I love the Blendle Alerts functionality, by the way!) Auto-generated \u201crelated articles\u201d won\u2019t cut it, I\u2019m sure \u2013 it takes (machine-assisted) human curation to link all the good stuff to the appropriate storylines<\/a>. And as a reader, I want all the relevant articles in one place \u2013 not just the for-pay print articles, but also free online articles and blog posts. This probably doesn\u2019t fit in with Blendle\u2019s business model, but it\u2019s something I\u2019d love to help make happen!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

You have probably heard of Blendle, the promising \u201ciTunes for News\u201d startup from the Netherlands that\u2019s backed by the NYT and Axel Springer. They\u2019re launching in Germany on September 14th. I\u2019ve been a fan of the Blendle idea for a long time: effortlessly buying print articles from a central \u201conline kiosk\u201d, with an equally easy […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1806","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-weblog"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.strehle.de\/tim\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1806","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.strehle.de\/tim\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.strehle.de\/tim\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.strehle.de\/tim\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.strehle.de\/tim\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1806"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.strehle.de\/tim\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1806\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1920,"href":"https:\/\/www.strehle.de\/tim\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1806\/revisions\/1920"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.strehle.de\/tim\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1806"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.strehle.de\/tim\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1806"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.strehle.de\/tim\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1806"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}