Mystery surrounds Murdoch’s Project Two22 initiative

Rating: A more upmarket iPad app from News International

Following our story here about the Page 360 feature built into The Sun’s iPad app, a helpful reader alerted GoMo News to a story which has just sufaced in London’s Evening Standard newspaper here. It concerns a News International initiative. Most Brits are aware that News International runs The Times and The Sun newspapers whose boss in one Rupert Murdoch. Anyway, the company is plotting something called Project Two22 which according to the Evening Standard is focused on digital innovations such as iPhone and iPad apps. Previously, GoMo News was surprised at News International’s weird choice of demographics by aiming its iPad app at Sun readers.

This rumour makes more sense because it is apparently targeting far more up-market readers.

Project Two22 is obviously named after News International’s business address at 222 Gray’s Inn Road, near Holborn, London.

Now this building houses News International’s Times Literary Supplement and its recruitment business –Milkround. Their target audiences could well be iPad totting or iPhone owning readers.

However, the Evening Standard claims this project isn’t a precursor to the launch of a standalone digital paper.

Interestingly, even though some of the staff have come from the News of the World (NoW), it’s not an attempt to restart a Sunday paper, either.

Brits are well aware that Murdoch closed down the News of the World at the height of the mobile phone voicemail hacking scandal and we’re expecting a replacement to appear eventually.

Initially, we were a bit suspicious of this story since we couldn’t find any mention of it elsewhere.

Then we remembered the good old days of drinking in the Blue Lion pub – virtually opposite 222 – with the influential Mad Mike Magee.

So this leak obviously stems from a conversation overheard in a pub. Which gives it some credence. If Magee still worked for IDG, he’d have definitely got this one.