If you’re still wondering whether moving your online newsroom to a responsive design platform is a worthwhile investment, the recent release of Snapchat’s long-awaited news tool, Discover, should erase any residual doubt. The app lets media outlets post mini-sized content on Snapchat, whose average user is only 18 years old. Ten media outlets, including CNN, ESPN, and National Geographic, are publishing news on Discover in an attempt to reach young people, who are notoriously avoidant of traditional news media.Partnering with Snapchat is a risk for these media companies, who need to attract young people to their news sites. With Discover, the user never leaves the app—all content lives within Snapchat. But media outlets seem to be willing to take their chances in order to reach future news consumers where they live—on their mobile devices. Clearly, companies like CNN, ESPN and National Geographic have realized that the future of news is mobile.
We’ve seen a similar turn to mobile technologies both in our research and in the increased mobile traffic coming to our clients’ online newsrooms. In our recently released 2014 Mobile News Survey, we found that 81% of respondents use mobile to follow news frequently/all the time and that 61% use mobile to share or recommend news frequently/all the time. So if your online newsroom isn’t mobile friendly, you are likely losing out not only on traffic but on social sharing and the visits generated by sharing. To learn more, download our 2014 Mobile News Survey Report today.
