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What happens when Facebook "ends news" in a country?

If New Zealand passes the Fair Digital News Bargaining Bill, evidence suggests Meta will quickly end news availability on Facebook and Instagram. This would follow similar action in other countries, significantly impacting the information landscape.When Canada passed a similar law last year, Meta very swiftly ended news availability on Facebook and Instagram, and this ban continues. It also briefly did the same thing in Australia. Meta has already indicated it will take similar actions in New Ze...

VoxPop expands U.S. operations with key appointments

Boston, Massachusetts — February 29, 2024VoxPop, the voice-to-text platform that bridges the gap between listeners and broadcasters, is expanding its operations in the United States with the appointment of Gabe Bullard as Director of Editorial Strategy and Jon Peck as Director of U.S. Sales and Marketing.VoxPop is an engagement platform developed by journalists and used by NPR’s 1A, WBUR’s On Point, Maine Public/Maine Calling, and shows around the world. It allows listeners to send high-qu...

Radio Hawke's Bay launches Emergency Broadcast System (EBS)

A new Emergency Broadcast System (EBS) has been developed for Hawke’s Bay to provide residents with reliable, detailed, and timely information during disasters. The system leverages existing AM/FM radio infrastructure and adds a unique digital platform for information gathering and sharing.Bridging the information gapCyclone Gabrielle highlighted the challenges of accessing information during emergencies. The EBS addresses this by:● Utilising AM/FM radio: Accessible even without po...

Small town newspaper in New Zealand first with Google

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Helping your audience build a customised audio news service

By VoxPop co-founder, Peter Fowler Put an "Add To Playlist" button next to individual reporter stories and let your audience create customized news bulletins. Listeners to flagship radio shows such as NPR’s Morning Edition will be familiar with a format of lots of shorter stories selected by editors. But what if the audience could select the news stories to create their own personalised news bulletin? For me, the appeal is that I can avoid news I do not want to hear, such as stories about rug...

New Speech-Text Q&A Platform Launches

Concept for voice-text Q&A platform comes to life.Kinga VoxPop Ltd’s latest platform offers the opportunity to host unique voice-driven Q&A or Ask Me Anything (AMA) events. The Q&A’s can also be edited together later into a podcast. Our unique Q&A platform allows guests and the audience to interact using speech. It is a moderated environment, opening exciting new content options for media, corporates and special interest groups. Q&A’s are popular with media outlets - whether with a Covid ...

RJI Online: Try these apps for easy entry into audio for breaking news and audience reaction

Audio storytelling is a growing business. Chambers Chair in Journalism at the University of Oregon School of Journalism and Communication, Damian Radcliffe, lists three apps - including VoxPop - in this article for the Reynolds Journalism Institute on easy entry into audio for breaking news and audience engagement. If you already produce text content, it's simple to turn it into a podcast. https://rjionline.org/news/try... ...

The Quest For Rich Data

By Co-Founder, Peter Fowler. Over the past two weeks I have been meeting with leading companies in the Australasian market research sector, whom it seems are all on a quest for “Rich Data.”   They seem to  collectively have a yearning to find ways to better understand people and the things they do.  There are established ways of doing things - text survey forms, zoom video calls - but some of these senior managers had reservations about them. One research boss from a...

Easily Create and Publish Your Own Podcasts, All In One App.

Whether you are a professional podcaster or just starting out, our platform provides a virtual studio for production quality recordings, which you can then publish back into the apps.  Or you can simply upload podcasts created off platform. Here’s how to easily create a podcast using the Consult/VoxPop interface:...

Radio's Day Of Reckoning

By VoxPop co-founder, Peter Fowler The media is amidst another significant change and this time it is a direct threat to the traditional radio model. An entirely new cyberspace made of voice and sound is growing at a phenomenal rate worldwide.  It’s currently dominated by Big Tech whom, already knowing what you do just about everywhere, are now looking to the final frontier - your home.     Google calls it the “Audio Web.”  Some refer to it as the “Conversation ...

VoxPop Plugs into the Studio, Saving Time and Money

“Our broadcasters can now come in and record shows at any time of the day (even with after hour access) without an audio engineer having to be present to record their voice breaks for their shows.”  Andre Mandella, Access Radio Taranaki 104.4FM, New Zealand By Peter Fowler Innovation from Access Radio Taranaki 104.4FM in New Zealand has seen the Community VoxPop Studio platform literally plugged into the station studio, following everyone back to work from COVID-19 lockdown/sh...

Taming the Facebook beast

By Peter Fowler Facebook boycotts don’t appear to worry Mark Zuckerberg.  Why would they when commentators say Facebook is “too big to fail.”   Zuckerberg’s not worried about a consumer boycott, because people don’t have anywhere else to go. And, to quote Hamlet, “There’s the rub.” If you want to reign in Facebook, you need to lure its audience away.   Facebook is after all a media company. Its business model lives or dies on audience size. You just need ...

Bridging the Digital Divide

VoxPop bridges the divide between the terrestrial side of radio and the digital side and helps them grow and interact on-air and online.Science Friday for example uses VoxPop for different segments of the weekly radio show and podcasts and then packages it up for a digital audience on different platforms including the web site, You Tube, Soundcloud, Twitter and Facebook.Here's some examples:Christmas bird count:Audience members were invited to recommend a good science book for summer reading:htt...

Broadcasting during COVID-19

By Peter Fowler, VoxPop co-founder. When Radio New Zealand asked William Ray to make a daily podcast about Covid-19, one of the first questions was how to involve the audience safely with everyone in lockdown. Community station manager Phil Grey just wanted to keep his station on-air without asking his volunteer programme makers into a studio where they would be at risk. In late March New Zealand shut down everything except essential services to fight the Covid 19 virus, and everyone confined th...