Following its November launch, OnSwipe competitor (and TechCrunch Disrupt finalist) Pressly is bringing another major media outlet’s content to the tablet interface. The company is today announcing the launch of a new publication called Electionism. The app was built for the Media Lab, an internal product innovation team inside The Economist Group, which includes The Economist, CQ Roll Call and other businesses.
The new app offers coverage of the 2012 election in the U.S., including insight, analysis and other content from The Economist and CQ Roll Call. A section called the “Latest from Twitter” aggregates tweets from candidates, political pundits, publishers and other organizations, while a “Noted Elsewhere” section allows Economist journalists to share links to what they are reading.
Like some other media outlets, including the iPad-only The Daily or the Financial Times’ own app, the Electionism app was built for tablet computers – it doesn’t exist as a newspaper or in any sort of printed format. In addition, if you try to visit the site from a desktop web browser, you’re alerted to the fact that the app is for tablets only, and pointed over to The Economist instead.
The difference between something like The Daily and Electionism, however, is that the latter is an HTML5 web app – not an iOS app or Android app built using native code and sold in an app store. Pressly CTO Peter Kieltyka previously referred to his company’s product as “Sencha for tablets,” meaning that Pressly is meant to serve as a framework for building HTML5 web applications for the increasingly mobile-optimized web.
The current version of the app supports the iPad (iOS 4.3+), the Samsung Galaxy Tab and the Kindle Fire, the company says.
Earlier this month, The Financial Times Group, which owns a 50% share of The Economist Group, acquired the development firm that built its own HTML5 web app, a move indicative of publishers’ growing interest in HTML5 . Pressly’s other big customers are also publishers, including The Toronto Star and Ziff Davis, which recently brought its tablet shopping experience Logicbuy to the iPad.
If you’re using a supported tablet, you can view Electionism in action here.