~ Existing Fwix service to become genuinely hyper local for the UK ~

Hyper local advertising and news agency Oxbury Media has signed an exclusive agreement with Fwix to source the site’s postcode level content and re-sell its news products in the UK. The deal will see Oxbury Media agreeing relationships with news sites that will allow them to carry Fwix’s hyper-local content. This content will be sourced via the Oxbury Media owned web site UKVillages.co.uk and the company’s existing network of 10,000 hyper local media sources. These range from village magazines to glossy regional lifestyle publications.

Founded in October 2008 by Internet entrepreneur Darian Shirazi, Fwix filters local news and information available from blogs, news sites, and social media sites. Currently, the company is active in over 160 cities in the US, Canada, UK & Ireland, Australia, and New Zealand. Consumers can read the aggregated news in the form of daily ‘paperboy’ e-mails which deliver news about your local area, on the site itself or on third party Web sites that have commercial agreements with Fwix. This news can be further personalised by the user as they record their level of interest in each story, making it more or less likely that that type of story will appear again.

At present Fwix’s content is only localised by city in the United Kingdom. However, the Oxbury Media deal will result in the service becoming genuinely hyper local by July 2010. As a result content will be localised by town, village or even postcode.

The news published via the Fwix feed will be complimented by hyper local advertising attached to a geo-tag. This will be booked via Oxbury Media, in the same way that it currently sells advertising in its existing network of hyper local publications, which have a combined circulation of over ten million. Profits from the advertising will be shared with news sources that feature the hyper local feed on their site. In the United States the Chicago Tribune is already using this model to provide content for its web site.

“The next step is to invite more publishers to input their news into our UK Fwix feed,” explained Jason Mawer, managing director of Oxbury Media Services Ltd. “This content will then be geo-tagged and sit alongside our existing hyper local news to provide an even richer experience for users. We are already talking to several major news organisations about this and are actively looking for more,” he continued.

“The media landscape in the UK is in the throes of an economic earthquake,” rumbled Mawer. “We’ve gone from the position a year ago when new clients were asking why on earth they would want to advertise in a bunch of parish magazines to being approached this month by a major UK business that is already spending a million a year on hyper local without knowing it. They are trying to maintain local brand identity using a corporate message by giving budgets to every branch and having each branch spend them separately. The irony is that it’s costing them nearly that amount again to administrate; because they aren’t set up do this cost effectively.”

So our message is simple; we want more publishers to get in touch, from one man Bloggers to national newspapers, and we want more ad budget holders to wake up to the opportunities they are missing and pick up the phone.”

In the long term Oxbury Media plans to develop additional Fwix feeds, which would be based on either the user’s occupation or a combination of their occupation and their location. In addition, plans are already in place to add hyper local video content to the feeds and make a UK version of the Fwix iPhone application available by the end of the year.

 

Ends: 637 words

Electronic copy: Get an electronic copy of this release by mail richards@stonejunction.co.uk or download from www.oxbury-pr.blogspot.com. If you want to stay constantly up to date on the latest news from Oxbury Media Services, paste the following link into your RSS reader, http://oxbury-pr.blogspot.com/atom.xml If you don’t have an RSS reader, I can recommend the following free package www.sharpreader.net

For further information contact: Jason Mawer,
Oxbury Media Services Ltd, East Barn, Fairclough Hall Farm, Weston, Hertfordshire
Telephone: +44 (0) 800 088 7282
e-mail: Jason@oxburymedia.co.uk
www: www.oxburymedia.co.uk

Press enquiries: Richard Stone
Stone Junction, 33 Kirkdale, Sydenham, London, SE26 4PN
Telephone: +44 (0) 20 8699 7743
Fax: +44 (0) 20 8699 7743
e-mail: richards@stonejunction.co.uk
www: www.stonejunction.co.uk

Ref: OXB019/04/10