Blottr was a
citizen journalism
Citizen journalism, also known as collaborative media, participatory journalism, democratic journalism, guerrilla journalism or street journalism, is based upon public citizens "playing an active role in the process of collecting, reporting, a ...
news website based in the
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotland, Wales and North ...
and started in August 2010 by entrepreneur Adam Baker. Originally featuring hyperlocal news in London, the site grew to cover a total of eight UK cities: Birmingham, Bristol, Cardiff, Edinburgh, Leeds, Leicester and Manchester. In October 2011 Blottr expanded outside of the UK to Blottr France and Blottr Germany. Blottr peaked at more than 5000 contributors and more than 1.4 million unique visitors a month. Blottr was shut down in April 2014.
Platform
Users who sign up for Blottr could add text, tags, videos and photos to one another's news stories in a wiki-platform. Blottr featured regular columnists whose blog posts were not able to be edited. Blottr circulated news through its website, Twitter, Facebook and a weekly digest email. In order to rate
user-generated content
User-generated content (UGC), alternatively known as user-created content (UCC), is any form of content, such as images, videos, text, testimonials, and audio, that has been posted by users on online platforms such as social media, discussion f ...
, the site used an "authentication algorithm" which rated users based on influence, number of revisions to a story, number of contributors, and more.
In July 2011, Blottr also launched an iPhone app, Papparappzi, which allowed would-be citizen journalists to capture photos and footage of news happening around them and then easily upload it to the Blottr website.
Business model
Blottr monetized by selling licensing to its crowdsourced news platform, calle
NewsPoint starting in June 2011. The site secured an angel investment in May 2011 worth up to £1 million to expand its operations. The investor was
Mark Pearson, founder of MyVoucherCodes.co.uk.
Contributors participated in a revenue-sharing scheme in which they received £1 for every thousand page views.
Notable Stories
In May 2011, Blottr beat
BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC
Here i going to introduce about the best teacher of my life b BALAJI sir. He is the precious gift that I got befor 2yrs . How has helped and thought all the concept and made my success in the 10th board ex ...
and
SkyNews
Sky News is a British free-to-air television news channel and organisation. Sky News is distributed via an English-language radio news service, and through online channels. It is owned by Sky Group, a division of Comcast. John Ryley is the he ...
by three hours in a story about a London bomb threat. During the
London riots
London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...
of August 2011, founder Adam Baker said the site broke the news of riots in Ealing and Woolwich before mainstream news outlets.
Awards and recognition
In 2011 startups.co.uk awarded Blottr its "Innovative Business of the Year" and "Most Disruptive Business" awards at the Tech City UK Entrepreneurship festival. Startups.co.uk said in a statement that "Blottr has real potential to become a very strong digital brand name in the next few years, and is a fabulous example of British creativity and digital prowess". The 2011 Europas also gave Blottr highly commended status for media, recruitment and education.
References
External links
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{{Citizen journalism
British news websites
Citizen journalism