Times Internet launches India's first tablet magazine, Tweek

TIL has partnered with cloud-based publishing firm GENWI to launch the magazine, which is currently available on iPads.

Times Internet Limited (TIL) has announced the launch of India's first tablet magazine, Tweek. The magazine, which has been developed in partnership with GENWI, a cloud-based publishing company, can be accessed through iPad and is expected to be launched for the iPhone and Android devices soon.

The weekly magazine will feature stories from around the world on subjects ranging from business, entertainment and lifestyle to sports. The interactive format will allow readers to instantly share stories through social networking sites, including Facebook and Twitter, and also share their feedback with the Tweek team. Tweek enables the reader to not just read a story, but also listen to, watch and thus, experience the content.

Rishi Khiani, CEO, Times Internet Limited, says, "With Tweek's launch, we intend to pioneer the tablet magazine space in India. We are interested to experiment with different ways to monetise our content beyond traditional web advertising. Taking advantage of this new medium, which incorporates the rich engagement features of the web into a mobile touch experience on a larger screen, we can deliver new advertising concepts. GENWI's Cloud Publish solution enables us to deliver contextual commerce, rich-media advertorials that are geo-location aware, and switch out advertisers or ad units on the fly."

The tablet readers will also be able to actively shape a magazine. They will be able to connect directly with the writers of Tweek, and share their feedback about the stories they enjoyed. Thus, they will be able to effectively 'Tweek' the magazine to something they look forward to reading every week.

P J Gurumohan, founder and CEO, GENWI, says, "With the power of the cloud, Tweek will save time and production costs by reusing design layouts from week to week, all in standard web-based protocols such as HTML5, CSS and JavaScript. The most groundbreaking aspect of the application is the way it surfaces existing content and takes advantage of the tablet experience to create higher levels of reader engagement, and the flexibility to explore new monetisation channels."