The Daily, News Corp's iPad-only digital newspaper, lost $10 million in the first quarter, the company said on its earnings call today.

That's a little bit less than Newsweek lost in the first quarter of 2010, before it was sold to and merged with the Daily Beast last November.

Then again, The Daily had one-time startup costs while Newsweek didn't.

The loss isn't close to the $100 million that Conde Nast put into the launch of its glossy business magazine Portfolio, which it shut down in 2009 after less than two years.

Still, it's shaping up as an expensive experiment for a company whose past digital investments like MySpace haven't always gone so well. Especially if interest in the publication is dropping, as a recent analysis of Twitter traffic from the app suggests.

News Corp said that the app had 800,000 downloads, but wouldn't say how many of those people became paying subscribers.

See also: Photo Tour Of "The Daily" -- See What All The Fuss Is About.