• by Steve Smith , Staff Writer @popeyesm, January 4, 2012

With some analysts estimating that up to 5 million Kindle Fires have already sold through since the product's mid-November launch, publishers are starting to take notice and get some early mover advantage on the platform. To wit: near-ubiquitous news brand USA Today extends its reach onto the Fire this week with an app redesigned expressly for the 7-inch tablet screen. President and publisher David Hunke says at launch that part of USA today’s mobile strategy is to be "the first news source on emerging technologies.”

Well, in fact other news providers have been here for a while, including WSJ. But unlike some early Fire providers who either tried to replicate the iPad experience on the smaller screen or opted for the mobile web version of their sites, USA Today actually has worked on a form-factor-specific version. The main page of the app offers a featured story and long scroll of breaking news. Section navigation is handled by a pop-up box that lets the user tap the seven major sections (News, Money, Tech, et. al.) and highlight sub-sections. In some ways the Kindle Fire app offers more efficient drilling into the deep content and sub-sections of the USA Today digital media pool than does the current version of the iPad app.

Its signature slideshows are in the app mix, as are videos that snapped on screen quickly. Unfortunately there is a bit of flipping involved, since the videos play in landscape mode. We also were frustrated by the sharing tools, which seemed hellbent on getting us to share on Facebook and so kicked us out to the Fire browser. We couldn’t even find a way to email ourselves or anyone else a story.

The free app has Volkswagon as its primary sponsor.  The VW logo fades in at launch and full screen insterstitials appear if you swipe through stories in a section. But again the click-through experience here is as frustrating as it is with the Facebook link. When these links kick you out to the browser there is no easy way to get back to the USA Today app whence you came. Tapping the Back button in the browser just got us an error message.

There is a lot of promise in USA Today’s first stab at shrinking the full-size tablet experience into the smaller long screen without dumbing the app down. In fact we like the pop-up nav box, because it allows for more precise lateral navigation. But clearly there are still some kinks to be worked out when it comes to integrating apps with the rest of the Fire’s communications features.