2 May 2019
The digital services company Levira has invested €150,000 in the Estonian start-up Votemo as the company is preparing for expansion. The money will be used for product development and entry into new markets. This week the companies are visiting London together as Levira is organising a Business seminar for UK-based broadcasters in partnership with the Embassy of Estonia in London.
More than 60% of the audience is browsing on 2nd screen while watching TV or streaming online. TV Channels are losing money as 32% of the audience is browsing or speaking on the content they are watching at on someone else’s platforms.
Tõnis Vassar, Co-Founder and CCO of Votemo: “Our goal is to provide the broadcasters and live event organisers a set of tools to build a bridge between their audiences and their own digital channels, instead of sending people to social media portals where they can get lost while browsing cat videos.”
With Votemo, broadcasters can provide the audience an opportunity to participate in the show and influence the debates and conversations. Voting and commenting solutions, sending questions and emotions to Live studio are just some of the services Votemo is offering.
Commenting on the investment, Martti Kinkar, development manager for media services at Levira, said: “We believe that cooperation with Votemo will give Levira the opportunity to offer its customers innovative services and attract new customers. We will continue our joint exhibitions and joint offers this year”.
Tõnis Vassar pointed out that “Over the past year, all major social media platforms have opened their own TV services. The audience wants to talk and share their moods with others. This habit has been encoded by the daily use of social media. Since television does not yet offer these possibilities directly, the television viewer tends to disappear into the exciting worlds of social media.”
Kinkar continued: “Votemo is already cooperating with many media and telecom companies in the Baltic-Nordic region and has won several awards during its first year of operation. Now that the product is ready and tested, the next step is to win the hearts of major European TV stations and here Levira can help”
Levira is one of the biggest independent TV playout centres in Northern Europe. Levira transmits programs to viewers in the Baltic States, Scandinavia and Europe as well as Turkey and United Arab Emirates. The majority of local TV programmes in Estonia are transmitted through Levira’s towers.
Levira has two shareholders: the Republic of Estonia (51%) and the French telecom and broadcasting company TDF (49%).
Votemo is Estonian startup and alumni of accelerator programs Elevator Startups, Telia Vunk Labs and Storytek Creative Hub. Votemo is a platform for Broadcasters to make programmes more engaging. In addition to voting and commenting, Votemo brings emotional icons from social media to TV for the audience to express their moods. Votemo can be used with all TV solutions, including web TV and TV applications. Votemo has started collaborating with the Baltic TV channels, such as TV3, TV6, TTV, ETV (Estonian Public Broadcasting) and Telia TV. The participation rate is about 7% of the audience.
Business seminar for UK-based broadcasters – “Why choose Estonia for a Post-Brexit EU Broadcasting Licence?”
The seminar will offer an opportunity for UK-based broadcasters to learn about Estonia and demonstrate how Estonia can serve as the European licensing base for you following the withdrawal of the United Kingdom from the European Union. The representatives of the Estonian government, the Association for International Broadcasting (AIB) and AS Levira will talk about the possibilities and digital solutions Estonia can offer to overcome potential challenges that broadcasters could face in the post-Brexit media landscape. The seminar is hosted by the Estonian Embassy in London at 44 Queen’s Gate Terrace, London SW7 5PJ. Thursday, May 2, 2019, from 2:30 pm to 5:00pm.
Key contacts:
Mr. Tõnis Vassar, CCO & Co-Founder of Votemo Phone: +372 5237 855, E-mail: tonis@votemo.eu
Mr. Martti Kinkar, Development Manager for Media Services, AS Levira Phone: +372 550 5451, E-mail: martti.kinkar@levira.com
EVENT RSVP: Ms. Kati Niin, Assistant to the Management Board, AS Levira Phone: +372 680 4000, E-mail: rsvp@levira.com
18 December 2014
Newstag – the Stockholm-based crowd-curated news service – is opening a subsidiary in Cairo, Egypt to handle all its incoming video news content.
Newstag’s approach to sharing news through social media will bring together video news stories from professional content producers around the world, including AP, AFP and Reuters.
The six-strong Cairo-based team will be responsible for handling, verifying and tagging stories as they arrive in one central location from all over the world. The multilingual team will operate round-the-clock handling thousands of stories each week.
The multinational team is made up of editors from around the world who have chosen to be based in Cairo for their work in journalism and media. They will also provide bespoke production and post-production services in Egypt and the region as a whole.
“Cairo is booming again: Egypt is at the crossroads of East and West and there are so many talented individuals in this city. This megalopolis with its tens of millions of inhabitants is a great centre from which to understand the world in a more nuanced way. This is at the heart of Newstag’s philosophy,” says CEO and Founder, Henrik Eklund.
Chairman and Founder Camilla Dahlin-Andersson, who has had a long career in social services and academia, added: “We are taking our first steps towards serving this dynamic market and continent and this is a significant and exciting move for Newstag.”
The opening of the Cairo bureau follows a $1.3m investment into Newstag from a group of private and institutional investors. In recent months, the company’s rapidly expanded its network of commercial and content partners as it gears up to launch its application.
Newstag’s ‘mobile-first’ service will enable users to create their own personalised ‘tagstream’ – or TV Channel – sharing the stories that they care about among their social networks. In an attempt to rebalance the traditional relationships between industry stakeholders, Newstag also offers users an opportunity to have a real impact on the world around them through the tagging of brands and NGOs.
CEO and Founder, Henrik Eklund, was AP’s Director of Digital Partnerships and Distribution in Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) and Asia. Before joining AP, Henrik was the founder and CEO of Kamera – one of the world’s leading mobile and online distributors. Prior to Kamera, Eklund founded PAN Interactive, one of Europe’s leading game publishers and distributors.
Company Chairman and Founder, Camilla Dahlin-Andersson been a member of parliament and served on several boards for large institutions. She is currently completing her doctorate in Innovation Management at Stockholm School of Economics and Mälardalens University.
7 May 2010
The new People’s Choice award in this year’s AIBs is very exciting for a number of reasons. It is the first time we are asking the general public to vote for awards, which allows the shortlisted entrants to gain a wider exposure for their programmes, as viewers will come from throughout the world, including many countries where the programmes are not currently broadcast. The voting process will also use social media to gain interest and attention, providing another example of the sort of audience engagement and participation which is becoming more and more important to broadcasting in the 21st century.
In addition climate change, the subject of programmes in the People’s Choice award, is a highly topical subject which provokes fierce debate and raises issues which could have a dramatic impact on the way that all nations live. Different countries, and even different tribes and regions within countries, risk being affected in different ways. For example, the indigenous people of the Amazon risk their lands turning into dry savanna (see here for how our sponsor, ADB, is helping the Surui tribe) while the coastal regions risk more flooding.
Because of the differing risks, as well as different political viewpoints, the range of views on climate change is enormous and the challenges of exploring and explaining the science are great. We hear about the fierce debates in the US Senate ; India and China are signing up to the Copenhagen accord; a survey in Africa shows that many Africans blame God and not global emissions for climate change; countries as diverse as Mongolia, Saudi Arabia and Madagascar show increasing awareness by joining in Earth Day celebrations.
We are eager to see the submissions for the People’s Choice award to see how broadcasters from throughout the world are tackling this contraversial issue which raises such passion and which is so important to all of our futures.
4 May 2010
The AIB is enthusiastic about the possibilities for social media tools such as Twitter and Ushahidi to enhance news reporting and the creation of factual programming. We have already seen Twitter used for breaking news in countries from Haiti to Ukraine (and I am hearing about some interesting tools being developed to analyse Tweets to discover changing opinions – I will be giving more details when we are allowed to). They are also great tools for promoting broadcasts and we will be using them extensively to publicise the People’s Choice award in this year’s AIBs.
However, I remain to be convinced about Twittermedia‘s enthusiasm for the new ability to be able easily to enter Tweets in a news story. They highlight ReadWriteWeb’s story on HP and Palm as a great way to convey reactions to a story without having quotes from different people spread round a story. While it is great to be able to provide accurate quotes and Twitter helps in this, a key role of journalism and factual broadcasting is to provide a context and develop a story around individuals’ comments. I hope that we do not see the rise of articles which rely just on picking out a number of Tweets without explaining them and referring as well to those who are not Twittering (yes, they still exist).
