Crowdsourcing Photographs Will Change The Rules Of The Game For Journalism And Publishers

Scoutti, an innovative smartphone application, is trying to change the way we access, treat and consume information. Crowdsourcing photography on demand is the next step of photography, for regular users and especially for news editorials.

Tel Aviv (I-Newswire) February 14, 2013 - “One picture worth 1,000 words” is not just a catch-phrase; it’s a part of our daily lives and it’s in our veins. We use images to communicate reality, our lives and experiences. Our lives are full with uncertainties and one would like to think that in our hyper-connected world, some of these uncertainties would vanish thanks to the massive amount of information we are exposed to. However, this is not the case. Over than 350 million photos are uploaded every day on different online platforms, and yet it’s nearly impossible to find something useful whenever it comes to real-time sensitive subjects. And it’s not only a part of our personal lives; this is an immense daily challenge for news editorials that try cover the news in the most broad and accurate manner. Wherever you’d find a newsworthy event, you can be sure that photojournalists will arrive to the scene as fast as they can. For breaking news, it's always a minute too late.

But the landscape of journalism has changed so much in the past 5 years and newspapers and news sites are struggling to keep up. Journalists from all over the world are crawling social networks to find relevant materials to make their story more appealing and complete. They spend huge amounts of money to innovate in the online sphere, and yet to have found a real break-through. Readers on the other hand are eager for information and consume it in every way possible. But the proliferation of social media channels is also making it difficult to find good materials with profound and in-depth view of the subject in hand. 140 characters have become the new standard for communicating news. So how do you make a difference? By being the first to add new information and by being more visual. We all know now that photos "sell" more and increase engagement from readers.

Here is where Scoutti comes in to play (Official Website). Scoutti is a smartphone application which the concept behind it is an innovative approach to solve some of the problems described above. On top of the regular searches and social news feeds that we have gotten used to, it uses a more active approach. Users can now, for the first time on a broad and global scale, request other users to take photos from interesting locations. It allows a more engaging experience of finding interesting photos and motivates people to upload new content online from places, or time, that they would not have thought about doing so otherwise. Not only that, it is accessible to those who are interested in those photos instead of broadcasting it and hope that someone cares.

One of the key features offered by Scoutti is the real-time approach. Users are notified in real-time about relevant requests near their location and the requesting users are notified when photos are uploaded. This is creating a live feed of photos and requests for all users. Now, the connection to journalism is almost natural. Imagine an editor or a journalist covering a news topic and seeking for images to add to the content, and maybe even to learn more through these photos. Today they would have to acquire photos from photo agencies, from freelancer photojournalists, keep in-house photographers and, as mentioned earlier, search for relevant user-generated content online. This are all working, but not really leveraging the power of having so many people with smartphones on the streets every day. With Scoutti, all these people are now one click away from any journalist around the world. They can direct them to take specific photos from specific angles and cover the news as they want to cover it. Scoutti is designed for exactly this purpose and allow an immediate publication of photos for the media. Any media channel can contact Scoutti today to set the initial agreement and start enjoying the service. At the moment the service is completely free, but the company is not ruling out allowing money (or other rewards) transactions between media channels and users. In any case, when cost management is a part of every editor’s challenge these days, Scoutti could save a lot of money and open up budgets for other uses.

So where do we go from here? We launched an Android version of the application two months ago, finished a closed Alpha test round in January, and now focusing on increasing our user base. We are looking for partners from the editorial industry to run a Beta with and to better develop our service for their needs while boosting the potential of Scoutti. The product is available for anyone at the moment, and we are adding features rapidly. Those who are interested in more information can contact us at contact@scoutti.com.