Via the service, daily breaking news headlines are sent by SMS to subscribers' cellphones from the Mail & Guardian Online website. The service also includes a weekly SMS which previews the big news scoop in the Mail & Guardian newspaper, sent to a reader's phone before the paper hits the streets every Friday.
According to Matthew Buckland, editor of the Mail & Guardian Online, the website is looking to expand beyond the daily news service and offer SMS services around the website's popular events, gig guides, and short movie reviews. The website is also investigating multimedia messaging which entails sending out pictures and cartoons by MMS when the market and technology is more mature.
Says Buckland: "To some extent, cellphones have succeeded in an area where the web has found success difficult to come by - the ability for a content publisher to derive revenue from a reader who is interacting purely with content. So this represents an excellent opportunity to not only bring extra value to our readers by delivering news to their phones, but creating another revenue stream for our operation. It is also an important marketing vehicle for the newspaper."
"Increasingly, we are seeing the convergence of various content delivery platforms, whether it be Internet, cellphones, print or television and this venture is just one step down this line. It means that our readers can get the news from the website and newspaper and stay in touch via their cellphone no matter where they are," says Buckland.
Says Mark Hoffman, general manager of M-Web Mobile: "Partnering with the Mail & Guardian to offer this service to customers is a perfect fit for M-Web Mobile, as one of our main objectives are to provide users with meaningful, relevant and useful information. We are currently also expanding our offering to the growing small and medium size businesses."
The service costs R19 per month to subscribe and readers can pay for the service over the Internet via credit card. If the reader is an M-Web subscriber, the cost can be added to their monthly bill.
The service is a partnership between Mail & Guardian Online and Internet Service Provider M-Web who supplies the technological backbone for the project. The Mail & Guardian Online supplies the content and runs the daily update and maintenance.
To subscribe http://www.mg.co.za/sms.
