stedavies.com - communications consultant

I’ve just been chatting with Moblog UK co-founder, Alfie Dennen via email about the site and what they’ve got planned for the future. Interesting stuff! For anyone that isn’t familiar with Moblog UK, it’s a moblogging community where members (free to join) can email photographs from their camera phone direct to their own personal moblog. It was launched in November 2003 and has grown to be the largest moblogging site in Europe and has a growing rate of 20 per cent a month.

Moblog UK has already had an array of positive reviews from the media, including the BBC, Guardian, Forbes and others. Probably the most significant mention that goes further from any ‘promotional’ ink was being awarded one of Time Magazine’s “Best Photos of the Year 2005″ for a camera phone snapshot of the London Bombings which was first featured on Alfie’s moblog. After this event, the use of citizen journalism in the UK was elevated to new heights, as everyone saw first-hand in terrible circumstances how useful it could be.

As well as offering a moblog community, they also work with high profile music artists including Maximo Park and Goldfrapp. Setting up branded moblogs so fans can interact and share content with the artists and each other.

But this type of social media isn’t restricted to only music artists with a dedicated fan base. It can be used in a whole host of other ways – ways that can be related to PR campaigns. Take for example, the North East regional development agency, One NorthEast. Part of One NorthEast objectives is to promote the North East region by showing visitors what it has to offer. Setting up a branded moblog and asking people of the region to submit their photographs of the region would be a good example of using user-generated content and co-promotion. The Google juice wouldn’t hurt either.

Moblogging being used in PR is still in its infancy and has quite a way to go before the non-tech PR firms pick up on it, but it seems to have a lot of potential as there really are no limitations in its use.

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mobloguk, moblog, moblogging