The NY Times’ Snow Fall piece that debuted in 2012 set a standard for what was possible for a feature-article layout in digital – but it took six months and north of $100,000 to make. Fast-forward to 2015 and now we’re able to create those beautiful digital media experiences much faster and cheaper – and put those tools in the hands of thousands of editors for free.
That’s the promise of Tempest, Say Media’s platform that powers digital magazines such as Fashionista, xoVain, xoJane, ReadWrite, Bio.com, Lifetime Moms – and more recently, Ape to Gentleman and Sabotage Times.
To quote the great computer scientist Alan Kay, the best way to predict the future is to invent it. And that’s what Say Media is aiming for with Tempest.
“Today’s digital media experiences are limited by the cobbled-together publishing systems they’re built with. The publication of the future won’t have a mobile template and a web template; it will be built from the ground up for all devices. It will not have social plug-ins; it will be inherently social, richly interactive and deeply community-oriented,” says David Lerman, CTO, Say Media.
“It won’t have Google Analytics or Chartbeat sitting on the side; it will integrate actionable data across every dimension of the experience to help build and grow audience,” Lerman continues. “It also won’t have ads tacked on in little boxes around the edges; it will deeply integrate brands into the site experience in a way that creates real value for the marketer while respecting (and even enhancing) the sites voice.”
But most of all, says Lerman, the publication of the future will be authentic, it will be engaging and it will be beautiful.
Tempest, often dubbed the next generation content management system, caters to the needs of storytellers and readers with editor-friendly, smart layouts and device-agnostic article pages. Unlike a general purpose CMS, it has been built from the ground up to support the needs of modern publishers, optimising engagement and growth. In addition, it is fully hosted by Say Media giving publishers reliability and scalability, while reducing hosting and web development costs to zero. With no technology to purchase or maintain, the platform leaves publishers with more resources to focus on creating great content and gives authors and editors the best tools to create rich, interactive stories.
This combination of user-friendly, design-forward technology, hands-on customer service and access to state-of-the-art premium ad products – at no cost – is fueling rapid growth for Tempest. It’s quickly becoming a sought-after publishing solution for digital magazines around the world.
Tempest is also the online home to a broad range of publishers, including one of the biggest names in food, lifestyle and media: Rachael Ray. The much-loved cook and lifestyle expert’s umbrella site RachaelRay.com is leveraging Tempest to create an online experience that ties together content from across her brand, providing a beautifully redesigned hub for fans who want to tap into Rachael’s recipes, videos, merchandise, philanthropic initiatives and more.
Sites moving to Tempest get much more than just a redesign. Tempest is a huge leap forward in publishing technology that makes it dramatically easier to add new features and roll them out quickly across any site on the Tempest platform. It gives editors a brand new authoring environment to make them more effective and efficient. It’s built on a totally redesigned technology stack that allows for richer interactivity, and lets editors react to real-time data more effectively. It gives editors new tools to tell richer and more interactive stories, giving readers better ways to find and interact with content – and it automatically optimises pages to look beautiful on any desktop, tablet or mobile device.
“The challenge of having a digital publication now is how do you have a beautiful experience on desktop and mobile and derive ad revenue?” asks Lerman.
With Tempest, publishers can quickly and easily create content that displays beautifully on any device and include richer ad experiences in the mix such as Say Media’s Adaptive Ads – ads that move seamlessly across mobile, tablet and desktop – and that appear natively in the flow of content. Like flipping the pages in a print magazine, Adaptive Ads are a natural part of the reading experience and give publishers a new way to make a living with some of the most premium ad experiences available – experiences that respect their content and the aesthetic of their sites.
With momentum building, Tempest is also bringing traffic and readership improvements to the digital magazines that use it. XoVain saw a 162 percent boost in traffic in the first year after migrating to Tempest. LifetimeMoms has grown from 45,000 unique visitors to over 800,000 since it migrated, while Bio has boomed from 8 million to 12 million.
Originally posted WNIP 5 May 2015