Category Archives: Mobile

Breaking news from mobile to Twitter/Seesmic – perfect example of how it works

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Possibly one of the best example of how newspaper websites aren’t tapped in at all when it comes to reporting breaking news via mobile devices.

Mark Comerford makes the point by highlighting his Twitter buddy @documentally who crashed his Landrover this morning and recorded the events on Twitter and through Seesmic. Thankfully, no-one was hurt (the vehicle has more than a few scars though) and friends on the social network were able to help provide information on recovery services.

The compelling factor was that Mark blogged all the events, linking to the Tweets and video, pretty-much in real time as things were unfolding.

Breaking news events have been documented like this before across Twitter – news groups in the US have also used the immediacy of these services to good effect, especially for last year’s fires in California – but have you ever seen a newspaper, national, regional or local, in the UK ever try this out for their rolling news stories getting people coming back again and again for updates?

Thought not.

Jeff Jarvis on mobile journalism

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Beet.TV has an interesting video interview with Jeff Jarvis, associate professor and director of the interactive journalism program at the City University of New York journalism professor, on the advantages of mobile journalism.

In particular Jarvis has been testing out Reuters’ Nokia handsets at the recent World Economics Forum, where found practical advantages to the size of the device and the speed with which copy can be filed.

NYTimes.com mobile site records 600% traffic growth in 2007

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The New York Times‘ mobile site saw a 600 per cent growth in traffic last year, according to Janet Robinson, president and CEO of The New York Times company, who announced the group’s latest earnings report.

The site recorded almost 10 million monthly page views, Robinson said, and is now attracting ‘a strong roster of blue chip advertisers’.

Robinson added that the company as a whole had seen a 22 per cent growth in digital revenues over the same period – an increase of 8 per cent from the previous year – with these now accounting for around 10 per cent of the company’s total revenues for 2007.

To view the whole announcement, see this transcript courtesy of Seeking Alpha.

Sun’s mobile barcodes attract 11,000 users

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The Sun’s mobile barcode service, which allow users to scan barcodes in the paper to access extra information on their mobiles, has received 11,000 subscribers, according to a report by Mobile Today.

The ‘quick response’ (QR) technology requires users to download software onto their mobiles from The Sun’s site – though Nokia handsets have this pre-installed.

“There is an educational process that needs to be done. In the next few months we’re looking to do another pull-out [supplement in The Sun] to further inform people on how to use QR codes,” Ian Samuel, group head of mobile advertising for News International, says in the article.