by Joe Wallace

Apple just changed the blog game forever. Mark my words, this is the future of publishing, blogging, you name it.

It’s not the ENTIRE future, but rest assured, we are staring at a whole new playing field here, and it’s a game-changer. How much money do you have to spend on developing an iPhone app?

Wired reports a subtle, but important shift in Apple Store policy. Now, free apps can contain for-sale content. This means in-app commerce, it means a shift in the way published material is delivered, and most importantly, it has the potential to render blogs like this one almost obsolete unless we mutate to keep up.

From the Wired article:

“Previously, in-app commerce was a feature exclusive to paid apps; free apps were not permitted to sell content.” Innocuous enough, you say. But read on, freelancer. It gets exciting AND daunting. I myself am pondering the net effects of this and how to best get on top of it before the stampede.

And there WILL be a stampede once the implications are clearly understood.

See, publications like CNN sell an app for a couple of bucks, but most now give theirs away for free. The idea behind an iPhone app is that you can get content from your favorite source delivered to the phone–but NOW you can get a combination of free AND premium content. The new rules allow this, where as before only for-pay apps could offer for-pay content.

Read the Wired article and you’ll begin to understand why this is such an exciting, scary, groundbreaking development for blogs, online publishing and the industry in general.

Welcome to publishing, 3.0.