According to Local world, the free apps – delivered to Android mobile and tablet handsets every workday at 5pm to capture the engagement of the homeward-bound commuter – offer readers a digestible collection of the most important and entertaining content from their city.
The concept, built in close collaboration with the GooglePlay store, will select social, snackable and shareable stories from the News, Sport, Galleries and What’s On categories of the daily editions, plus the day’s biggest news from each local area.
The first wave of titles in Local World’s portfolio to publish the new apps are the Bristol Post, Cambridge News, Derby Telegraph, Gloucestershire Echo, Hull Daily Mail, Leicester Mercury, Nottingham Post, South Wales Evening Post, Stoke The Sentinel and The Plymouth Herald.
The launch on GooglePlay represents the first regional evening news app, and marks Local World’s progress in innovating and adapting to the demand for online local content. The apps will use Local World’s audience analytics software to help shape the best possible content to the valuable evening audience.
Local World has worked alongside the software house, Kaldor, to conceive, design, build and launch the Android-first titles. The businesses have also worked closely with GooglePlay to ensure the apps adhere to the specified design standards, ensuring their rapid and smooth launch.
Matt Kelly, Group Digital Director at Local World says “So many readers and journalists grew up with the evening edition of their local paper being the pulse of their city. We’ve taken the essence of this and worked very hard with Google to develop a simple and brilliant new set of apps that will inform and entertain our readers on their way back from work every evening.”
Jonny Kaldor, CEO and co-founder of Kaldor says: “To launch even a single app used to be a time consuming and costly exercise, but not any more. Our work with Local World shows that with Pugpig, we are now able to build beautiful and feature-rich content apps in a matter of days, without compromise.”
