Legit.ng Emerges Winner of Google News Initiative Grant
Google News Initiative grants $2.1m to 22 media companies. Legit.ng on the list.
Three Nigeria media organisations, Legit.ng, Ripples Nigeria and Stears News Limited are among 22 successful recipients for the Google News Initiative’s second Middle East, Turkey and Africa Innovation Challenge.
Source: Original
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Google News Initiative funds projects that inject new ideas into the news industry. 22 media innovators from Africa, the Middle East, and Turkey will receive $2.1 million in funding.
Legit.ng was honoured to receive a grant for implementing a recommendation system (ReCo) that improves user experience. ReCo makes content recommendations based on the users' preferences on the home page and within articles. It shows highly relevant content and, as a result, metrics like page views and session duration will increase. In the long run, readers' loyalty will also boost with demand for certain topics being met.
Digital publishers are competing for users’ attention with social media, news aggregators and streaming services that have advanced personalization features.
Knowing the audience and suggesting content of their interest, gives a competitive advantage and grows their interest in news content overall.
“It's a number one task to put readers first and inform them about matters they care about,” said Legit.ng’s Editor-in-Chief Akinyemi Akinrujomu.
“Legit.ng is thankful for Google News Initiative’s support. We appreciate Google’s dedication and readiness to help companies like ours to achieve milestones such as improving user experience when it comes to news delivery. It is indeed an honour.”
Ripples Nigeria will create Eco-Nai+ project. This is Nigeria’s first digital geo-journalism platform providing access to interactive geo-data through web and mobile applications. It will host environmental data such as drought, rainfall and erosion, while carefully tracking and marking changes to environmental phenomena to establish the incidence of climate change.
Stears News Limited will build an easy to use subscription management service that will enable African publishers to monetise their audiences without technical expertise. At its core, it will integrate recurring payment workflows for publishers to manage, track and organise readers using multiple payment providers.
Full list of winners can be found at the GNI site.
Source: Legit.ng
