The iPad is coming on April 3rd and with that, thousands of journalists looking for an angle.

Daniel Lyons has a gushing piece in Newsweek about the iPad.  According to Mr. Lyons, it’s another irresistible Apple product that will change the consumption of content and computing as we know it.  He was one of the lucky few that received a sneak peak.  This quote was in the article.

With the iPad, a lot of people are hoping there’s a killer app that we just can’t conceive of yet,” says Peter Farago, vice president of marketing at Flurry Analytics…

This brings up the key question - what is the core value (i.e. killer app) of the iPad? The iPhone has a killer app and it’s the phone.  The phone is a critical part of people’s life.  By providing this need well, Apple opened up doors to vastly improve what a phone could be.  What’s the killer app on the iPad – what will make people bring it with them EVERYWHERE?

iPad Core Value Options

1. Commerce – If iTunes can spur people to buy from their mobile devices, which it has proven it can do, why not broaden their goal beyond media to physical goods?  When will we see retailers in iTunes?  In theory retailers could tap into the mobile market by selling their products in iTunes (one of these days iTunes will change it’s name to iShop).  E-Commerce is a key driver behind Google’s growth. This trend is just starting on the iPhone, and potentially the iPad.
2. Video - I’m not sure that the iPhone/iPod has been as successful a platform for video content as much as it is for music and apps.  People don’t consume nearly as much video as music and apps on Apple products.  This represents both a challenge and an opportunity for Apple.  If people just need a bigger screen they’ll have it with the iPad.  A big if.
3. Print Media – Steve Jobs wants to do for print media with iBooks what he did to the music business with iTunes – get people to pay for their content.   There are two models for content creators to get their share – Google’s ad model and Apple’s paid model.  The battle is how will people consume content.  Everywhere.  If the iPad becomes a platform for reading print media, that’s a big win.
4. Gaming - It’s hard for me to speak to this one because I don’t play video games much.  I have doubts about the ability for a top video game platform to co-exist within a broader operating system, but who knows.

I’m not sure what the answer is.  But, I do think that the fact that there is no clear killer app is interesting.

A phone is something the world uses, but how will the iPad make itself indispensable?

Why, as a web Publisher, why can I not easily send an update to my RSS subscribers without publishing a new post?

Let’s say I have 700 RSS subscribers, and this is the primary way that people read my content.  Would Publishers find it valuable to be able to send a direct message to these 700 subscribers via RSS, without publishing a time-consuming new blog post?

Many Publishers use Twitter essentially as an extension of their site.  It’s a way to stay connected to readers without having to invest the time and effort writing an entire blog post.  Your RSS subscribers are, in fact, the same as your Twitter followers.  They’ve opted in and decided to follow you.  But it’s not as easy to communicate with them as it should be.

In my publishing platform, I’d like to just ping my RSS subscribers with a “micro post”.  Think Twitter built into a publishing platform.  I’ve written before about how RSS has many of the properties of social networks.

I’m more of a Marketing person than a Programmer, so perhaps it’s not hard technically to build this around RSS.  It could just be a matter of building a publishing platform that makes it easy for Publishers to communicate on a one-off basis with their RSS subscribers, using existing protocols.

It can be done, and will be done, in the next generation web Publishing platform.  Or maybe Twitter can partner with a Blogger or WordPress to help their Publishers maintain connections with followers, directly from their interface, without having to write an entire blog post.

What if instead of the channels you see on TV, everyone in the world had a camera and a channel?  You could select a person’s channel and then watch their videos. When you turn on your TV, you would see the channels of people you like.

In reality we have TV networks that act as content “filters”. These companies make decisions on what content we view and act as a filter. Content decisions are based on attractiveness to advertisers, potential for mass appeal, star power, and a host of other factors.  Movies have even bigger filters.

Twitter has no filters and some people think there’s a lot of “junk” content, there which leads to the question -  is the “democratization of content” a good thing? 

Twitter gives us a great view into that. If it takes something unique to create compelling content, we can assume that not everyone has “it”.  Content creators who have “it” will be on Twitter and have followers that read their content.  Those who do not have “it” will not generate followers or an audience.

Another perspective is the world of search.

Yahoo = filtered

Editors choose what appears on the home page. They put a lot of thought and spend a lot of money deciding what types of content has the most mass appeal. Lately, they’ve been trying to let people to customize the content more so people can be their own filter.

Google = no filter

Google asks users what specific filter they’d like to use in a particular moment in time. No editors, no filters. Just the user, a keyword, the web. The keyword is the filter.  It’s safe to say this worked.

The $1 million question is – does the mass market need filters or is the ideal a completely democratized content platform?  TV or Twitter.  I realize there’s no right answer, but it does make you think about the nature of content and what the future may bring.

If everyone creates compelling content – the ideal content distribution platform would make it as easy as possible for as many people as possible to create content.  Twitter is the best example out there today.  Billions of people have access to the web and 140 characters is easy content to create.

To contrast, YouTube is not as easy to become a content creator.  People need to have the ability to record a video.  Sure, it’s a democratized video platform, but any way you slice it it’s easier to input 140 characters than to film a movie and upload it.

If a limited number of people create compelling content – we need filters, like on TV.  And someday, someone will need to slap a useful filter on Twitter content to make it easier to consume.

Vote below and tell us what you think!