Metro Reporter – A Commuters’ UGC Community
This entry was posted in Various on May 19th, 2011 by Garrett Goodman - No comments »
Metro International, the world's largest global newspaper, launched its flagship Reporter Kit community in France just over a year ago.
We check in to see what the community looks like today.
Metro Reporter is the destination for Metro France's readers to share their news-related photos and videos. It is like a social tip line, where readers send their eyewitness content directly to Metro editors, and can also interact with each other to discover more street news from other readers.
The site is built on the Participative Solution build of the Reporter Kit, with a few extra modules, like the Call for Witnesses, and a little custom graphic design to fully match the look and feel of Metro France's main website.
Metro has been steadily adding new features to the Metro Reporter operation, which is possible thanks to the Reporter Kit's robust architecture. At the beginning of the year, Metro released a new mobile application designed by Citizenside that brings the Metro Reporter community to the mobile realm.
From the app, users can create new Metro Reporter accounts using a simple in-app Facebook connect, and returning members can log in using either Facebook or their Metro Reporter usernames. Users can browse recent reader uploads by category and topic pages, leave comments, cast votes, and of course, share articles to Facebook, Twitter, and via email.
The app has been a huge success, here are some stats from the first 5 weeks after the launch.
Apple "Featured App" for 3 weeks in a row
One particularity of the Metro Reporter initiative is Metro's program to pay readers for their photos if they are published by Metro. A Metro Reporter gets €70 for a front page image, €40 for an image inside the paper, and €10 for an image used on Metro France's main website. They use a special category to group all their published photos, the most recent of which is a great shot of Brad Pitt in Cannes uploaded yesterday.
"we have received more than 30,000 photos and videos
Last month the Digital Director at Metro France, Ari de Sousa, told me this about Metro Reporter:
"A journalist can’t be everywhere – this assumption is the main reason we launched our photo and video citizen journalist community, called Metro Reporter, in February 2010.Thanks to an efficient web and mobile platform built in collaboration with Citizenside, we have received more than 30,000 photos and videos in one year, and used more than 200 of them in print and online to illustrate articles written by Metro journalists."
To find out more about the technology European media leaders are using to turn their tip lines into social communities online, visit ReporterKit.com, or contact me at garrett@citizenside.com
We check in to see what the community looks like today.
Metro Reporter is the destination for Metro France's readers to share their news-related photos and videos. It is like a social tip line, where readers send their eyewitness content directly to Metro editors, and can also interact with each other to discover more street news from other readers.
The site is built on the Participative Solution build of the Reporter Kit, with a few extra modules, like the Call for Witnesses, and a little custom graphic design to fully match the look and feel of Metro France's main website.
Metro has been steadily adding new features to the Metro Reporter operation, which is possible thanks to the Reporter Kit's robust architecture. At the beginning of the year, Metro released a new mobile application designed by Citizenside that brings the Metro Reporter community to the mobile realm.
From the app, users can create new Metro Reporter accounts using a simple in-app Facebook connect, and returning members can log in using either Facebook or their Metro Reporter usernames. Users can browse recent reader uploads by category and topic pages, leave comments, cast votes, and of course, share articles to Facebook, Twitter, and via email.
The app has been a huge success, here are some stats from the first 5 weeks after the launch.
Apple "Featured App" for 3 weeks in a row
150K downloads on iPhone and Android
Member sign up increased by 1135% MoM
One particularity of the Metro Reporter initiative is Metro's program to pay readers for their photos if they are published by Metro. A Metro Reporter gets €70 for a front page image, €40 for an image inside the paper, and €10 for an image used on Metro France's main website. They use a special category to group all their published photos, the most recent of which is a great shot of Brad Pitt in Cannes uploaded yesterday.
"we have received more than 30,000 photos and videos
in one year"
Last month the Digital Director at Metro France, Ari de Sousa, told me this about Metro Reporter:
"A journalist can’t be everywhere – this assumption is the main reason we launched our photo and video citizen journalist community, called Metro Reporter, in February 2010.Thanks to an efficient web and mobile platform built in collaboration with Citizenside, we have received more than 30,000 photos and videos in one year, and used more than 200 of them in print and online to illustrate articles written by Metro journalists."
Ari de Sousa - Director of Digital - Metro France
To find out more about the technology European media leaders are using to turn their tip lines into social communities online, visit ReporterKit.com, or contact me at garrett@citizenside.com