Toronto Star Touch hits 100,000 downloads
A little more than 50 days after the launch of Toronto Star Touch, our free news application for tablet, we are celebrating our 100,000th download.
Star Touch is a radically new way to get the news. It is the most dynamic, immersive and interactive approach to screen-based storytelling in the English-speaking world.
It integrates video, photo galleries, graphics and a layered approach to story presentation that places readers in full command of their news journey.
Star Touch maintains the strong news values and the social mission of the Toronto Star, but it’s much more than a digital newspaper. Star Touch is a new generation of media for a new audience.
We’ve undertaken extensive research to help us shape a news, information, sports and entertainment agenda for the future. And we’re determined that it be free to all comers.
We know that it has to be free to attract younger people to an immersive digital news environment and we want the widest possible audience for the work of our superb newsroom.
The pioneer 100,000 downloaders are on average much younger than the readers the newspaper now attracts. This is tremendously im- portant to us as the business model for news changes.
Star Touch and thestar.com are our newest ways of reaching out, alongside, of course, the printed Star . . . connecting with Torontonians, indeed all Canadians, with a positive and constructive message about this city and this country.
For the last decade, the Star has been a lonely media bastion of progressive and constructive thought. It is important for our urban and national communities that the Star be around for future generations maintaining its focus on social justice and political accountability.
We’re off to a promising start. The best measure is how engrossing our new audience is finding Star Touch. Time spent reading is already three times greater than our previous tablet app and rising steadily as readers make evermore time in their lives for it.
Whether you’re looking for hard news, features, sports highlights, concert tips or how-to recipe videos, I welcome you to try Toronto Star Touch.
Give it a little of your time and you’ll find yourself better informed and even a little more surprised and delighted about your city and your world.
Download the free app, which delivers fresh content to tablets every day by 5:30 a.m.
Readers can easily download Star Touch free at the App Store, or by visiting: AppStore.com/StarTouch.