Google Propeller & Yahoo Livestand Set To Open Soon [Both Yahoo & Google Look To Bring Out Their Own Digital News Stand Applications In Coming Days, Yahoo Will Likely Be First]

Posted on TFTS by Steve Anderson on Friday, 28. October 2011 under: Audio,Visual, Internet Highlights

No sooner did we hear about the success that Conde Nast magazines were having since opening up their magazines on Apple’s Newsstand system than, just a couple days later, we hear that both Yahoo and Google are set to enter the fray with their own apps. And the interesting part is, Yahoo will likely beat Google to market.

Yahoo is set to open its Livestand at a meeting this Wednesday, according to reports, and this will open up access to several content providers. At last report, however, Yahoo was running content essentially only from Yahoo (though Yahoo does have a lot of content, and its recent partnership with ABC should bear that out rather nicely). They’ve been working on getting in more content providers, and we’ll likely find out just how successful they were come Wednesday.

Google, meanwhile, has less specific plans to wheel out their news stand program, dubbed Propeller. But while Propeller is still a work in progress, it is apparently a pretty well developed work in progress, with what’s described as “a plethora of media partners” interested in working with Google on this one. This isn’t really much of a surprise, though, given Google’s standing in the web community as well as the possibility of steering advertisers to the various outlets interested in working with Google. Google’s launch date, meanwhile, is significantly more amorphous than Yahoo’s.

And it just really goes to show the steadily growing popularity of online publication, especially these days. You’re seeing steadily less dead tree publication going on and more digital, which is in turn being driven by stuff like the Kindle Fire, which is bridging the gap between tablets and ereaders. It’ll be interesting to see on Wednesday just what kind of media presence Livestand manages to bring together, especially with the possibility that Yahoo may be selling out still hanging over everything.

So what do you guys think here? Think Livestand can assert itself as a major media clearinghouse? Think that Propeller will blow Livestand away? Will Propeller blow Apple’s Newsstand away? Lots of room for discussion here, and the best place to do that is down in the comments section below!