Archive for the ‘Press’ Category

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Why the world’s media companies use ScribbleLive

Tuesday, April 24th, 2012

Note: This is an updated version of a previous blog post, new features and API projects have been added.

Did you know that 90% of ScribbleLive’s direct customers have switched from another live blogging platform? Most of these moved over from Cover it Live. Many people ask us: what sets ScribbleLive apart?

A key part of our differentiation is how our platform has evolved, expanded and improved based on the needs of our customers and our strategic vision of how the real-time content and live-blogging landscape is changing.

Some of the things we’re excited about include:

Custom All Events Pages: If our generic archive page is not cutting it for you, then this new project should get you excited. You can now create a custom list of all your ScribbleLive events. Since the ‘all events’ page is not in real time, we didn’t use Javascript, we used PHP instead. Here is our ScribbleLive API ‘All Events’ project on Google Code.

Event Start Notifier Widget: This is another open source Javascript API widget – the Event Start Notifier. It will notify your readers when an event is about to start. The notifier will slide on to your website (any page or all pages, the choice is up to you), it will link your readers to the event on your white label site. You can style the notifier to match your branding, control the notifier’s location, and allow users to close the notifier if they aren’t interested in the event.

Recent posts API: Our new Recent posts Javascript widget will allow you to minimize bandwidth costs while supplying your readers with the latest news. You can display it on your homepage and include a link to the full event in your white label. Use this widget as a ‘breaking news’ section on your homepage, add it to your mobile app, or create a multi-column view of your event with different types of content in each column.

Multiple Language Support: As we continue to grow, we want to ensure that our language offerings cater to our diverse clientelle. In addition to publishing liveblogs that appear in multiple languages, reporters will be able to choose which language they’d like the backend interface to display in. Languages we currently support: English, Finnish, French, German, Arabic, Japanese, Danish, Spanish, Croatian, Italian, Portuguese, Russian and Turkish.

Moderated Writers: The moderated writer is new level of permission is available that’s ideal for cub reporters or anyone with a penchant for typos. The moderated writer will allow full access to log in, type updates, upload photos, video and audio files but the content they produce will not be published until is it approved by a moderator, editor, developer or administrator.

HTML Pages for SEO and monetization: A key advantage ScribbleLive has over competitors is our white label technology, which generates fully indexable web pages in real time, making it easier for search engines to discover your content. Embedded and widget-based platforms such as Cover it Live hide your content, making it difficult for search engines to index it or, even worse, they index it as part of another company’s brand.

Permalinks: Every ScribbleLive post has its own URL. This makes it easy for people to share that content on Twitter, Facebook and other social media sites to drive traffic and advertising revenue. Many commenting systems can also be integrated into these pages to provide a threaded discussion of an individual post to complement your content.

Mobile: According to Pew Research, 47% of survey participants get their news from mobile devices. This includes live coverage. ScribbleLive optimizes its liveblogs so no matter the device, your readers can seamlessly interact with your multimedia coverage. ScribbleLive supports all mobile devices through cost-effective mobile skins, as well as API-based integration for mobile devices.

Flexibility: With ScribbleLive, your team can create multimedia content in a variety of ways — via the web, mobile, email, SMS and voicemail. We offer iPhone, Android and BlackBerry apps to support journalists in the field. ScribbleLive’s API also lets clients build custom apps that push out news and updates to readers in real time.

Workflow: ScribbleLive’s industry-leading LiveArticle feature lets multiple reporters create complete articles that update in real time, making it an ideal tool to summarize the events to date in a breaking story. LiveArticle is just one example of how we’re constantly coming up with new ideas to meet and support the needs of newsrooms and digital reporters.

Syndication: ScribbleLive is the standard for major news agencies such as AP, Reuters, EFE, PA and RIA Novosti. No other content platform offers the ability to syndicate news in real time. ScribbleLive’s syndication capabilities let newsrooms lower the cost of producing content by sharing resources and coverage in real time.

For some companies, real-time is an afterthought or a nice-to-have.  ScribbleLive is built for journalists and news organizations that recognize real-time coverage is a core part of the future of journalism. If you share our vision, we’d love to share our capabilities with you. Sign up for a free trial or contact us for more information.

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Posted in app, journalism, Live Journalism, live publishing, Press, ScribbleLive | No Comments »

Liveblogs redefine how to cover breaking news

Tuesday, March 13th, 2012

Developing a digital strategy among the ever-growing crop of smartphones, tablets and social platforms is no easy task. In an article for Ad Age, Steve Rubel investigates the challenges faced by media companies as try to find their place among their digital audience.

He found that most newsrooms are focussing their energy and dollars on the most established platforms, although some aren’t afraid to experiment with brand-new (and red-hot) sites like Pinterest.

The other common theme: real-time coverage.

“Blogging might seem downright slow and quaint in the age of Twitter,” Rubel writes. “But some media organizations, including Reuters and Mashable, have taken a renewed interest in live-blogging breaking-news events and are seeing an uptick in audience engagement as a result.”

Rubel mentions two ScribbleLive clients, Reuters and Mashable, as leaders in digital strategy. He writes:

“Reuters Social Media Editor Anthony De Rosa said ScribbleLive, a real-time blogging platform, allows editors and reporters to take a “hover-and- dive” approach as news warrants. ‘Audiences have been glued to the live-blog format,’ Mr. De Rosa told me. Reuters is now using ScribbleLive to curate questions from Twitter and redefine how the wire service covers breaking-news events, such as elections.”

Posted in Live Journalism, live publishing, Press | No Comments »

Introducing Katy, Scribble’s new social media coordinator

Tuesday, March 6th, 2012

ScribbleLive is please to welcome Ekaterina Torgovnikov, aka Katy, to our growing team. Katy joins us as our new social media coordinator, where she will help the company beef up its social strategy and manage our various social platforms. Katy has worked at a social media consulting firm and has a degree in psychology and political science. “I am really excited to be joining ScribbleLive’s team,” Katy says. “The product combines the latest technologies in liveblogging with the instantaneous nature of social media to provide the best content sharing tool around. I cannot wait to see the new ways in which ScribbleLive is used next and I’ll be sure to share them all with you via social media!”

Here’s a short video interview with Katy.

 

 

Posted in Announcements, Press | 1 Comment »

We’re Hiring: Social Media Coordinator

Wednesday, February 15th, 2012

Looking for an exciting opportunity to drive social media for a fast-growing start-up? We’re on the hunt for someone interested in a three-month contract to spread the word about ScribbleLive.

We’re a world-class, fast-growing company whose clients include media giants such as Reuters, Hearst, Associated Press and ESPN, as well as media and corporate companies around the world.  We’re aggressively expanding our marketing efforts so this is an opportunity to play an active strategic and tactical role.

We want someone who’s engaged, hard-working and enthusiastic about making a major contribution. You get to work in a cool office in downtown Toronto with a great bunch of people focused on helping to make ScribbleLive’s industry-leading real-time content and live-blogging platform even better.

Here’s what we’re looking for you to do:

  • Write blog posts, articles, content for newsletters, and material for social media services.

  • Manage social media campaigns and day-to-day activities on Facebook, Twitter, and other social sites, and seed content as needed.

  • Provide feedback and insights from social media monitoring to the marketing and product development teams.

  • Manage a blogger outreach program to build an active brand ambassador network to spread the word about ScribbleLive. This would include leaving comments on blogs when required.

  • Use measurement tools to generate reports on social metrics, and explore ways to improve metrics through new activities, tools and programs.

  • Handle basic search engine optimization activities using best practices and tools

If you’re interested in applying for the assignment, send an email to jobs@scribblelive.com.

Posted in Announcements, Press, Press Releases | 1 Comment »

ScribbleLive included in two “best of” lists as 2011 ends

Tuesday, January 3rd, 2012

Website CMSWire has compiled a list of 2011′s major accomplishments in Digital Asset Management, and ScribbleLive was pointed out as a great example of re-purposing existing content in order to cover events. Software like Scribble answers CMSWire’s question of “How do you make the most out of social media without tweeting away your time?”

“While ScribbleLive is different from what some might call a traditional digital asset management system, I am of the opinion that the integration of social media functionality shows how services such as YouTube, Twitter and Facebook are changing the meaning of the word traditional.”

Over the holidays Scribble made another list, topping off Social Distortion’s “15 useful apps for successfully live blogging your event;” we’re listed as a “very well rounded solution and worth a closer look.”

Their post gives a great run-down of how our service works, and we’re flattered to be included. Thanks!

You can follow us on Twitter at @ScribbleLive.

Posted in Announcements, Press | No Comments »

Why you should report news with ScribbleLive instead of Twitter

Friday, December 16th, 2011

CapitolFax.com, an Illionis politics blog run by Rich Miller, recently started publishing ScribbleLive blogs as a regular part of its news coverage.

Miller, reacting to an AdWeek piece about the journalistic value of Twitter, explains why he’s using Scribble instead. “[Scribble’s] program is so awesome that Tweets usually appear on ScribbleLive before they appear on Twitter itself. Twitter went down in my part of the world yesterday for about a half an hour, but ScribbleLive was still up and running and kicking out the Tweets.

“Also, website owners like myself can’t monetize Twitter. To me, anyway, there’s no sense in allowing some faceless corporation to make money off of me if I don’t get a piece of the action as well. The idea is to use Twitter to bring people here, not the other way around. ScribbleLive allows me to do that by aggregating Tweets from numerous sources on my own site, along with news story excerpts, photos, video, audio and my own commentary/reporting. It’s almost a perfect platform for me, and it’s incredibly easy to update posts when I’m not in the office.”

“The new system appears to be working,” Miller writes of his foray into liveblogs. “The live session posts are getting more popular with every passing session day. People are watching the House debate while sitting in the gallery, for instance, and following Senate action via ScribbleLive right here. We not only had tons of views for the Blagojevich sentencing hearing, the automatic updating benefits of ScribbleLive took a huge load off our servers. On a day when we might have been in danger of crashing from too much traffic, we had no problems at all. It’s just a very cool thing.”

Posted in Live Journalism, live publishing, Press | No Comments »

HoHoTo: Photos and videos

Friday, December 16th, 2011

ScribbleLive was a sponsor for last night’s HoHoTo, a jam-packed annual fundraiser for the Daily Bread Food Bank in Toronto. We also liveblogged it, of course. Here, I use our LiveArticle feature to collect all the photos and videos the Scribble team captured using the mobile apps, and everything the partiers were tweeting with #hohoTO.

Posted in journalism, Live Journalism, live publishing, Mobile, Press Releases, ScribbleLive | No Comments »

Meet Kate Fairhurst, ScribbleLive’s new VP of International Markets

Thursday, December 15th, 2011

As Scribble continues to grow and bring on new customers, we’re expanding our team with top-notch talent. Today, we’re excited to announce that Kate Fairhurst has come on board as VP of International Markets.

In this newly created role, Kate will be responsible for growing ScribbleLive’s rapidly growing presence outside North America, including the creation of a team to support customers in the U.K. and Europe.

With Kate spending some time this week at Scribble’s office in Toronto, we did a Q&A to get some more information about the new gig and her take on the real-time content marketplace.

So, what are you going to do at Scribble?
My job is to expand Scribble’s real-time content creation and delivery platform in Europe and develop our existing relationships with media customers such as Sky News, Press Association and the Independent. I will be opening an office in London, and I have a mandate to work with our media partners to allow them to capitalize on the growing demand for real-time content across Europe. So, for example, I will be working with our important news agency partners to develop real-time content strategies that work for them on an editorial, financial and strategic level.

What’s your take on how media organizations are embracing real-time content?
The media landscape has been moving to real time more and more over the last few years but now it is absolutely imperative that the media embraces it. Most of the media market are now producing real-time content because they understand the need to engage and retain readers. I think now is definitely the right time for us to aggressively expand the world’s leading real-time content platform in the European market.

What is your background?
I have been in the media for the past 12 years but my specialty is working in and around content companies to develop new digital initiatives and revenue streams. I worked for the Press Association for six and a half years in a number of different senior management roles to create breaking news services for media and corporate markets. Most recently, I ran my own management consulting to provide strategic guidance to media companies.

Why did you join Scribble?
I joined ScribbleLive because it’s all about real-time content, which is becoming increasingly important. I was surprised by how many high-profile customers Scribble had. We’re already working with many of the largest media organizations such as Reuters, Press Association, EFE and Associated Press. It is difficult not be intrigued by a company when they have great customers on board. I love building companies and putting in place new teams so the opportunity to develop a bigger European operation for Scribble is very exciting to me.

Photo of Kate Fairhurst by Trevor Haldenby

Posted in Announcements, journalism, Live Journalism, live publishing, Press Releases, ScribbleLive | No Comments »

The secret to a good liveblog

Friday, December 9th, 2011

The now-ubiquitious liveblog is featured in two Fast Company articles today: “The Art of the Liveblog” includes a Q&A with Reuters social media editor Anthony DeRosa while “The Next Great Media Form” suggests that the liveblog is “The MP3 of journalism”, a logical successor to the traditional, pyramid-style text-only story.

In the Q&A, Fast Company’s Adam Penenberg (author of both articles) asks DeRosa “What’s the secret to a good live blog?” (Among his duties, DeRosa manages Reuters’ liveblogs, powered by ScribbleLive).

“You don’t want to just be a stenographer,” DeRosa says. “With these live blogs, I think people want analysis, they want a little bit more thought, something that’s going to entertain them and inform them beyond what they can usually see themselves. Because a lot of times there will be a live video feed, they’re already getting everything that some people provide in a live blog, so it’s got to be something more.”

In his second article, Pennenberg writes that “in the live blog format disparate platforms become irrelevant, and the walls between these separate silos of content simply dissolve.” He also quotes DeRosa:

“I think the traditional article is dead,” [DeRosa says]. It “should be more like a live blog, because the traditional story format lacks a lot of evidence in the form of video/photos/tweets that help corroborate what a reporter is alluding to in [his] story. Why not just have it right there in the context of the article, the same way it is in a live blog?”

Read both articles for an interesting examination of the real-time shift in traditional publishing.

Posted in journalism, Live Journalism, Press, ScribbleLive | No Comments »

ScribbleLive named top journalism app

Friday, December 9th, 2011

The Ryerson Review of Journalism is a watchdog for Canada’s watchdogs. Produced by Ryerson University’s magazine journalism students, it explores the art and craft of journalism in Canada. It’s most recent issue — Winter 2012 — includes a long-form, four-part examination of reporting on the North, a critical analysis of a recently re-branded Toronto weekly and a look at social media sniping amongst journos.

Also in the issue: a list of the top seven most useful apps for journalists. The Review’s Rudy Lee named ScribbleLive’s BlackBerry and iPhone apps as key pieces for the reporter toolkit, along with Free Wi-Fi Finder and Instagram (which I used to take the photo of the mag). You’ll have to pick up an issue to get the full list.

Ryerson is part of ScribbleLive’s j-school donation program. Its students are learning how to tackle real-time coverage using Scribble’s liveblog platform, and are producing live news for student publication The Ryersonion.

Posted in app, journalism, Live Journalism, live publishing, Mobile, Press, Tips | No Comments »

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