If you’ve ever squinted at a blog on your Kindle Fire, you know that tablets aren’t a great reading environment for the blog format. Thanks to Pressly’s launch of a self-serve platform for bloggers (another reason to love Canada), any web publisher has the ability to create content for iPad, iPhone, Kindle Fire, BlackBerry PlayBook and Android tablets. This is great news for writers and readers alike. For writers, Pressly provides an inexpensive way to self-publish. For readers, it’s easier-to-read content, and more of it.
Going live this spring (which is now!), the platform will allow bloggers to transform their sites and feeds into a touch-friendly, tablet-ready medium. This news brings both excitement and relief to the publishing world, as the rumored death of the newspaper seems to become more and more realistic (but for the record I am still keeping my paperboy employed). Although it might not seem like a big deal that you can access more sites on your tablet, having that unique hands-on engagement with whatever form of web content you choose is important. It keeps content moving, people informed and voices communicating.
Pressly will offer both a self-serve dashboard and WordPress plugin for making DIY iPad-friendly versions of sites and social feeds. But unlike other services, Pressly plans to reach across multiple tablet forms, as well as mobile forms. This innovation in publishing will hopefully allow more writers to spread their piece of mind and more readers to take it all in—anytime, anywhere.