MediaCorp expands new media services for growing pool of Internet users

MediaCorp expands new media services for growing pool of Internet users

By Valarie Tan,

SINGAPORE: Singapore media company, MediaCorp, is expanding its new media services, launching new products and enhancing existing ones for the growing number of Internet users in Singapore and abroad.

It has already taken many traditional media platforms - such as newspapers and magazines - online, but says it is enhancing its Internet content and services to meet the growing diverse media consumption habits of a new generation.

Young people have many ways to get information and reading a paper has never really been a top choice.

That was why from very early on, MediaCorp’s TODAY newspaper had an “EasyReader” service so that readers can download the news from any Internet connection and read it on the go. The service has since been upgraded with more content and new sections.

Meanwhile, MediaCorp’s flagship online product, channelnewsasia.com, has launched a video player version called “my news playlist” that offers the same ability to customise as “EasyReader”.

Net surfers can pick from a two-week archive of news and lifestyle videos and create their own news video.

Mr Shaun Seow, Deputy CEO for MediaCorp (News, Radio, Print), said: “We’re going to make our online content more interactive, because really the Web 2.0 space is about ‘me as a user and trying to get content that’s personalised for me’, people who have an empathy for online space, people who stop seeing that my news only goes out at 9.30 or 10 in the evening. But really the ‘everytime’, the ‘anytime’ is primetime for the online users.”

According to Hitwise, channelnewsasia.com is among the top news websites in Singapore. The website hit nearly 65 million page views per month in the first quarter of the year, up 25 per cent from the year before.

According to channelnewsasia.com, about 10 new clips will be put online every day. These will not just be about Singapore news but events happening around the world as well.

For lifestyle offerings, MediaCorp says the wedding portal - Style Weddings - will get a makeover and enable its business partners to showcase catalogues of wedding-related products and services.

To encourage user-generated content, MediaCorp recently launched “RAWClipx” on podcast.sg.

MediaCorp says response has been good, with an average of 2,500 downloads a day. It expects to hit two million page views by the end of the month. Users can now not only download content but upload their own.

Mr Shaun Seow said: “A lot of resource these days is not about what we can do. We have got to rely on people out there to generate content for us, like
user-generated content.

“Is that content? Yes! That’s content, when it’s valuable, it adds insight and relevance, and so we should stop seeing ourselves as just the only generator of content, but we’ve got to rely on the community out there as well.”

MediaCorp says it is making this a priority, even for its classifieds website, mocca.com. Beyond being a website where people do transactions, plans are underway to roll out social networking services.

Timothy Goh, MediaCorp’s vice-president for customer relationship management, said: “Community comes in our next stage of our revamp. We have a platform for people in different verticals of communities to come into a forum to talk about it. And we’ll have content moderators, we’ll have facilitators to help in facilitating when they’re sharing their opinions and stuff like that.”

Mocca.com also recently added a business directory called “One Guide” that lists some 100,000 companies.

The website has also enhanced its property and car sections to allow users to compare models or find amenities, such as schools, near their homes.

- CNA/ir

Source : Channel NewsAsia - 08 Aug 2008

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