No Need to Rush Apps or Websites!
Ilicco Elia, the Head of Mobile for the UK media company LBi, warned his fellow colleagues to not rush too quickly into the mobile craze.
“Websites and applications are the icing, as long as you have content,” he said.
He also reiterated a common theme of the Summit: that technology must always be the servant, never the master.
“It’s not about the technology,” he said. “It’s about the story it tells.”
Apps Are Going Beyond Mobile
French journalist Gilles Raymond reiterated the previous session’s focus — how to gather news correctly with the correct mobile device — but instead focused on the best approaches to distribute this news to a wider audience.
“Apps everywhere will change the digital media world of today,” he said.
But in his mind, even the way people traditionally consider the “app” as exclusively mobile will change.
“I think what we see is that app is going beyond mobile,” Raymond says. “Apps are on tablets as well as on PCs, and they are sometimes running on TV, such as Google 2.0.”
This, he said, is a future that journalists must prepare for.
Growth of Mobile News – “Not a Threat”
JV Rufino, the Head of Mobile for a Filipino group of news outlets, focused on the financial feasibility of mobile news distribution.
“That’s where mobile comes in,” he said. “To add new revenue streams and business models, to replace the old ones and equalize the playing field with broadcast competition.”
To Rufino, the influx of mobile news, especially the growing popularity of apps and smart phones, provided an opportunity to create a new sustainable business model, arguing it should be viewed as “an enhancement, not a threat.”