JNW provides timely, well-sourced news headlines via text messages to reach you on your mobile phone wherever you may be.
Concisely written text news reach you faster and more conveniently than news delivered via other media such as internet, radio or television. As JNW news is delivered to your mobile, you won’t miss key news headlines and events when they happen.
At all times, JNW aims to be a facilitator of sharing news, views and experiences by citizens. i.e. JNW aims to be driven by public news priorities and needs.
Started by a group of journalists, JNW reports Sri Lankan news for Sri Lankans and those who want to be informed of happenings in the island.
You can text comments and feedback to a general SMS blog (visible on the main page or you can click here for its details) as well as make regular internet-based comments to their short headlines. You can also see all the comments together; clicking on the comment text takes you to the headline article. They also have a citizen journalism website with longer articles at http://www.groundviews.org/ .
This is full tilt Twittering in a way ( how many news operations are Twittering breaking news? I know I am), and I think more and more news organizations will develop platforms like this. This is Web 2.5... Ive been saying for a while that standard web sites for news -- as we now think currently think and wring our hands over -- in 2 to 5 years will be less and less important in favor of more mobile applications like this.
JNW's great, but is still just scratching the surface of what's really possible using SMS and the web. I've documented the evolution of JNW in some detail and have a video of its founder / owner / director on my blog. See http://ict4peace.wordpress.com/2008/03/10/sms-news-alerts-in-sri-lanka-a-short-review-of-jnws-new-site-and-service/ for the last review I wrote of the site and service with links to the other articles.
ReplyDeleteBest,
Sanjana Hattotuwa
thats great, thanks for the info and the link -- Ill check it out shortly!
ReplyDeleteMany thanks for the report Stefan,
ReplyDeleteYes, its an interesting exploration, and after 23 months of dire financial issues, I am happy to say that we are now lifting our heads out of the water.
With agreements with five telecom operators and a possible sixth, we may pass 100,000 subscriber mark fairly quickly.
I am keen to get outside perspective on what we are doing, and would appreciate your opinion on the following:
I think a key benefit of SMS is empowerment, and I don't see any downside to SMS except varying degrees of choice that can be offered to the public.
What I mean is that, if I wasn't a journalist and I had a reuters terminal at home I would feel fairly confident that I was in on the news, and that the news came to me rather than the other way around. Ofcourse I would be paying $1,000 per month for the dish version.
We are offering a similar service for Rs30 per month ($0.30). I am sure our subscriber base is now islandwide, which means almost anyone with a phone can now afford it.
Incidentally, Sri Lanka reached 8 million mobile subscribers out of a population of 19 million recently.
A big constraint though is user friendly vernacular fonts for mobiles, but I hope that changes soon.
Greatly enjoyed reading your insights on CJ,
Regards
Chamath Ariyadasa
Editor
JNW News