Todd Larsen: “It's Not Just About The iPad”

Apple's AAPL App Store has been an important feature for many organizations, especially game developers. But when the iPad launched earlier this year, one of the biggest app releases came from none other than the Wall Street Journal. “We released it right when Apple released the product,” Todd Larsen, President of Dow Jones, told Benzinga during a recent interview. Larsen said that they wanted to build an app that was both unique and capable of providing a newspaper reading experience. “The response from consumers has been fantastic,” he said. “The engagement that we see with it has been off the charts.” As far as marketing goes, Larsen said that the WSJ app has mostly been marketed through the firm's own properties. “The one thing about the iPad is that it has very much of a single distribution point through the store,” Larsen said. “And we have been able to be very popular out of the gate and that has made it easy for consumers to find us.” Going forward, Larsen said that he is very interested in things that engage the consumer. “It's not just about the iPad,” he said. “It's about tablets. You are going to see a large proliferation of tablets in the months ahead and so we look at being aggressive in the tablet space as important and I think you are going to see us innovate a little bit more in terms of how we put content in the hands of the consumers.” To hear more from the Dow Jones President, don's miss Benzinga's full interview with Todd Larsen.