Mfarhanonline Social Media News: How well is The Daily , the iPad newspaper launched by Rupert Murdoch in February, faring thus far? The short answer is: We don’t really know. Despite repeated requests from media, The Daily ‘s publishers are refusing to disclose exact numbers. At a PaidContent conference in March, publisher Greg Clayman would only say that downloads were in the “hundreds of thousands,” but not how many of those thousands had become subscribers to The Daily , which costs $0.99 per week. Anonymous sources have since told Jeff Bercovici of Forbes that the app had been downloaded 500,000 times and that 75,000 people have become “regular users” of the app, at least during the extended free trial period. Those aren’t promising numbers, given that The Daily needs about 750,000 subscribers per year to break even, according to media critic and blogger Jeff Jarvis’s estimates . (That figure does not account for advertising revenue.) The title costs around $500,000 to produce each week, after an initial investment of $30 million, Murdoch said at the launch event in February . Other signs are even more discouraging. In collaboration with social media firm PostRank , Joshua Benton of Neiman Lab found that the number of tweets sent each day from The Daily ‘s app are declining precipitously — and perhaps, therefore, so is readership and overall engagement. This is in spite of the iPad 2′s launch , which brought millions of new, potential customers to the device. The graph tells an interesting story: Enthusiasm for the app was high at launch and fell off sharply during the first two weeks as readers became frustrated with technical glitches and, as a recent survey suggests, the lack of original, quality content. Readership remained steady during the rest of the free trial period and dropped ag! ain afte r the its expiration on March 21. Note that in the total two-month period, only 6,026 tweets were generated from The Daily app, according to PostRank’s findings. Given the available data, it’s little wonder that The Daily has been mum about its progress so far. What has your experience with The Daily been like up to this point? Are you still reading — and enjoying — the publication? More About: ipad , News Corp , postrank , The Daily For more Media coverage: Follow Mfarhanonline Media on Twitter Become a Fan on Facebook Subscribe to the Media channel Download our free apps for Android , Mac , iPhone and iPad Social Media reviews series maintain by Mayya
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