| Blottr | |
| Content Licence: | --> |
| Owners: | --> |
| Editors: | --> |
| Launch Date: | August 2010 |
| Current Status: | Offline |
Blottr was a citizen journalism news website based in the United Kingdom 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.[1] Blottr peaked at more than 5000 contributors and more than 1.4 million unique visitors a month.[2] Blottr was shut down in April 2014.
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, the site used an "authentication algorithm" which rated users based on influence, number of revisions to a story, number of contributors, and more.[3]
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.[4]
Blottr monetized by selling licensing to its crowdsourced news platform, called NewsPoint, starting in June 2011.[5] 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.[6]
Contributors participated in a revenue-sharing scheme in which they received £1 for every thousand page views.[7]
In May 2011, Blottr beat BBC and SkyNews by three hours in a story about a London bomb threat.[8] During the London riots of August 2011, founder Adam Baker said the site broke the news of riots in Ealing and Woolwich before mainstream news outlets.[9]
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".[10] The 2011 Europas also gave Blottr highly commended status for media, recruitment and education.[11]