News network Al Jazeera has been making many new forays into new and mobile media in the last several months and today is taking that a step further by releasing applications for both Android and Blackberry.
Perhaps the most important feature of the applications is the integrated ability to send photos and video to Al Jazeera. This capability has been a feature in news apps for some of the more progressive North American publications for some time. With the recent turmoil in the Middle East and the growing role of new media in the region it may be beneficial for the network to have thousands of smartphones available to send pictures and video to the news service.
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The Android and Blackberry apps streams Al Jazeera live at all hours of the day and provides access to the network’s blogs and news feeds. The network already has iPhone and iPad apps along with being preloaded onto all Samsung Wave devices in the Middle East and North Africa. It is also available on Nokia phones through the Ovi app store.
“Making Al Jazeera available across multiple platforms has been a central component of our distribution strategy,” said Moeed Ahmad, Al Jazeera’s new media manager in a press release. “Now as well as being able to watch the livestream of the channel, people will be able to consume the rest of Al Jazeera’s online content from their mobile phone.”
Al Jazeera’s new media progression has been coming at a rapid clip. In April the network announced a social media show, The Stream, that engages with its viewers through Facebook and Twitter and uses social media storytelling tool Storify as a guideline. In February it used Twitter’s Promoted Tweets to help the network make inroads in to the U.S. market. The network is also available on Internet-to-TV service Roku.
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