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Sunday, November 09, 2008

MobileFocus2008 event - Your daily newspaper goes mobile



”The Daily Newspaper goes mobile" - presented by Jan Helin, Aftonbladet, chief editor and publisher, http://www.aftonbladet.se

Jan started by presenting his views on use of mobile phones in Japan. Another interesting comment about the philosophy at Aftonbladet internet, use your gut feeling and decide to do something even if you are not quite sure it will be a big hit. This was the case for introducing scannable tags in the printed newspaper, the "beetagg" project.

Reflections from Japan;
  • Simple media business model in Japan
  • Too complex and expensive business model for content providers here in Sweden
  • UI simplicity, press a button and the service works
  • Low flat fee broadband
The "Beetagg project";



Introduce the use of tags for printed media used to get a direct connection with your readers. Importance of taking a strategic decision to go even if you don't know where you will end up

Results;

  1. Worlds first paper with a moving image - use tag click on phone ad in paper and get a video on phone
  2. Makes an paper article longer - see pictures from an event
  3. Have a dialog with the readers - vote on a question
  4. Service personalized to your needs - get the updated news for an item
  5. Customer clubs and ad solutions - just started this part of the project

What is a "Beetagg"?

Beetagg from Connvision is used for coding, QR and Datamatrix not good enough quality (to use on daily newspaper paper quality), the reader can also as an open solution reader, read these other two open standards. Support is there for secure solutions also where you can verify that use user e.g. only can click once and participate in a survey or buy something.

Some user statistics after the introduction day:

  • 45k clients downloaded of which 8k iPhone
  • 100 - 1k clicks per tag



Sony, ICA, PhoneHouse leading commercial partners. All Swedes and Swedish companies on the directory website http://www.hitta.se have a tag

Connvision Sweden has a site for design of your own tags for web/blog, see
http://www.beetagg.se/

UPDATE: Aftonbladet awarded "the Gold Mobile 2008 (Guldmobilen)" for this project.

http://www.aftonbladet.se/tagga/article3715093.ab

More from this event will come in newer blog posts from Thomas Lidforss International