MoFuse and The Houston Chronicle
On the afternoon of Sept. 9, 2008, Hurricane Ike entered the Gulf of Mexico and began to intensify. Ike had previously hit Cuba with winds topping 145 mph, making it a strong Category 3 hurricane. Over the Gulf, Ike gained enough strength to become the third most destructive hurricane to make landfall in U.S. And it was on a direct unrelenting course toward Houston, Texas, the fourth largest city in the U.S.
Acknowledging the real potential for a major disaster, The Houston Chronicle tapped mobile communications channels to connect people in the region. Major weather-related disasters often cut off access to electricity, public services, and vital information. Alternative communication channels, like mobile, can make the difference for a population isolated from one another and its news sources. As part of the Chronicle's disaster preparation, it created a special edition mobile website. Using the MoFuse platform, Chron.com quickly built a mobile version of its site that was geared toward delivering key information to those in Ike's path.
"Within a few minutes, we had built and published a version of the Chronicle that would deliver critical information to our readers," says David Herrold, online operations manager for The Houston Chronicle. "MoFuse made a special edition possible on very short notice, and we were able to create continuous updates to the mobile news throughout the storm."
From the time Hurricane Ike was predicted to make landfall on the Gulf Coast, until well after the storm hit, more than 500,000 people were able to access news from the Chronicle's mobile site. The site enabled those outside of the hurricane's affected area to stay connected to loved ones and news stories as they occurred.
"The Chronicle's Hurricane Ike experience definitely makes the case for 'just-in-time' mobile media," Herrold says. "Mobile sites like ours are easy to build, launch, and update, so we can continue our commitment to our readers to provide real-time important information in a format that is really easy to access."
So, now that you are hopefully feeling more optimistic about the opportunity for mobile social media, here are a few more examples to illustrate how mobile advertising is quickly becoming a medium with distinct advantages over traditional advertising.
