Worldnow Partners with Photobucket to Launch New Social News Aggregator™

NEW YORK, Feb. 20, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- Worldnow, the leading online publishing, content and revenue-solutions company for local media, announced today that it is partnering with Photobucket, the largest dedicated photo and video sharing site to launch the Social News Aggregator™, an innovative new way for stations to collect, curate and deliver content that leverages both reporters and citizen journalists.

With the proliferation of mobile phones, apps and social networks, there are an endless number of sources for the next news story.  Often, it is the community that sees and snaps the most compelling images but until now it has remained challenging to simply and easily aggregate user generated content (including both photos and videos) in one place. Photobucket and Worldnow's new Social News Aggregator™ platform will now enable news stations to convert this social media content directly into news, thus allowing for stronger brand building and connection to their community. 

How it works is simple. No software is required! Utilizing station hashtags (unique to person, place, events, etc), the Social News Aggregator™ will enable participating stations to automatically populate and gather topical photos and videos from various social networks and in turn deliver unique content and perspectives from their audience to their audience. This collaborative journalism and two-way conversation between stations and their community will shape news coverage in an exciting new way building upon strong user engagement, strengthening brand loyalty and ultimately growing news ratings. Stations can have a library of content and own it all; it's that simple and that powerful.

Stations will no longer need to mine a variety of social feeds for stories. Instead, all photos and videos associated with a station hashtag will be aggregated in the stations' Photobucket account.  From there, the station can easily incorporate this community content into their broadcast, web and/or mobile news coverage, providing access and angles that were previously unavailable.  As a result, the Social News Aggregator™ will provide participating stations with enhanced coverage, extended reach, more engaged audiences and incremental revenue opportunities. 

"It's exciting to bring a workflow solution to the news room that allows reporters and producers to easily aggregate user generated content in a way that is meaningful and resonates with audiences.  This new type of participatory journalism is critical in our evolving social/mobile driven environment. Newsrooms can now actively recruit their audience as "street reporters" in a meaningful way", said Gary Gannaway, CEO Worldnow.  In addition, this will also create a new platform for advertisers to use to reach their target audiences through a compelling, native ad experience.

About Worldnow Inc.

Worldnow is the only technology provider that bridges TV newsroom legacy systems and the digital world through its AIM technologies and its patented video scribe system. Worldnow, through its strategy team has used its workflow to enable entire newsrooms to embrace a best practice two-way publishing approach to winning audiences on any screen. In the last 4+ years, 13 of 14 RFP's for platform services sought by broadcasters have been awarded to Worldnow.

Current Worldnow customers include: Allbritton, CBS Local Digital Media, Cox, Dispatch, Fisher, Fox TV Stations, Griffin, Landmark, Lilly Broadcasting, London Broadcasting, Meredith, New Age Media, Quincy, Raycom Media, Reiten TV, Sagamore Hill, Sinclair, Titan, Waterman, West Virginia Media, Young Broadcasting and Media General. For more information please visit www.Worldnow.com. Worldnow services over 57 million monthly uniques and powers over 450 local broadcasters with 81% of US households covered.

About Photobucket

Photobucket is a longtime leader in the photo and video hosting and sharing space with more than 75 million monthly global unique visitors.  Photobucket delivers a comprehensive photo and video platform to empower both consumers and brands to do all of the things they want to do with their content.

Based in Denver, Photobucket is the largest dedicated photo and video site, hosting more than 14 billion images from 100 million registered members, who upload more than three million images and videos per day from the Web and connected digital devices. Photobucket delivers more than 100 billion images per month to consumers around the world.

SOURCE Worldnow