Mobile – Local Content – and Newspapers
We’ve often blogged about how newspapers should include intuitive local directory products into their sites, and we tell them to take it one step further and include mobile access as one of their user directory offerings. A most recent report released by comScore, further confirms our previous blog posts, as their findings show that the number of consumers who use their mobile phones to find local content has grown 51 per cent, when compared to last year.
It’s very well known in the industry that newspapers, and more so community papers, have an untouchable ability to ‘get local’ and retain local loyalty. And given this current comScore report, allowing users to gather content via their mobile phones is a great extension to any publisher’s online business. One thing publishers must be cautious of however, when attempting to deliver mobile content, is ensuring content is served up in a user friendly fashion. This is something that many of the pure play online competitors to the traditional publishing world, don’t do well today. For ideas and a view of who we think does mobile news and directory well today, check out: infospace and their mobile application, CNN mobile and if looking for another mobile app provider, you definitely want to take a look at Gumiyo.
comScore, 2009
