Biography:

Peter Kuo has been the managing director at Metro Daily since 2002. Metro Daily has a daily average readership that reaches 720,ooo people, with an average circulation of 380,000 copies each day. Kuo has many years of working experience in both banking and publishing, which included time spent as the chief executive officer of Hong Kong Daily News and was the general manager on Apple Daily’s launch team in 1996.

Speaker Summary:

Hong Kong’s New Media Revolution

Peter Kuo, publisher of Metro in Hong Kong started his presentation by paying homage to Steve Jobs and showing a video of the creation of Metro, the virtual newspaper created by the people and their experiment of handing out print issues of the paper on April Fool’s Day, giving creative license to people in Hong Kong.

Metro is considered the new media inspiration in Hong Kong.

“Metro has been betting and believeing in free content,” Kuo said.

Digital content and free content have flourished in a rate that wasn’t there in traditional journalism, he added.

Kuo gave examples of adapting new technologies such as Flipboard Inc., a free content aggregator, calling it a phenomenal, stylish, and personalized experience for the users.

Other examples in the free media revolution Kuo acknowledged include paywalls and premium apps as a changing model and big media businesses turning to the free content model, such as Wikipedia.

Kuo said Metro is a leader in starting free newspaper in Hong Kong, but he added that focus on innovations and content remains a priority.