Regional Newspapers Embrace MMS
Press release, 18 September 2006
More regional newspapers are using picture messaging to interact with their readers. Publications including the South Wales Echo, Birmingham Mail, Liverpool Echo, Manchester Evening News and Coventry Evening Telegraph have been using Spiral Arm technology supplied by the Picmore platform.
There's a range of applications of the platform. In some cases print items have promoted a campaign, such as pet, baby and beauty competitions, local reporting, and sports team photographs. In other cases, photographs sent to the platform have driven items in the print, such as when readers spot celebrities.
In many cases the messages sent in cost the reader noting more than the price of a normal picture messages. For competitions it is not uncommon for readers to be charged £1 per message, or as low as 25p per message. The Picmore platform handles this for the publisher.
Recent additions to the platform give newspapers more control over the look of their picture galleries online, enable different region's photographs to be combined into a single galery, adds reader voting in competitions, and begins the support for video sent in by readers.
Behind the scenes, AdsML, email and RSS can be used to automatically send images to a picture desk or another part of the newspaper, making it easier and quicker for the newspaper to react to reader images.
Notes:
- Spiral Arm (www.spiralarm.com) is a Brighton based software company, specializing in advanced software applications.
- Picmore (www.picmore.com) is a picture management product for the publishing industry, managed by YouView Ltd.
- Youview (www.youview.co.uk) is an infoimaging company based in Hove providing software as service solutions delivering fast, easy to use and economic online imaging to businesses of all sizes.
- Need contact details?
Images
An example of how MMS is used in the Birmingham Mail:
An example from The Liverpool Echo:
