ShowZu connects your mobile with a range of different sharing sites allowing the direct upload of pictures and videos to amongst others your YouTube, DailyMotion, Flickr and Facebook pages directly from your mobile device or from the desktop application which is based on the flexible Adobe AIR platform. Great if you want your facebook friends to see what you are up to on the go, but there are also more serious and exciting applications for ShoZu.
You can also send videos and pictures of news events directly to the BBC or ITV if you are near a major news event when it happens. It’s really easy to set up and is a really great way for users to actively engage themselves in citizen journalism.
The biggest motivation for users to take part in citizen journalism is perhaps that they can earn money from the clips they send in. Scoopt are ShoZu and looking to pay users for their efforts. Big Pictures are also bound to get on board with their ever unquenched thirst for celeb spot pics.
Systems like this will be pivotal in delivering the news in the future especially as camera phones become more developed with higher quality video cameras. Content providers will potentially have millions of citizen journalist in every corner of every country on the planet.
If news agencies and content providers can can leverage the potential of citizen journalism successfully tapping into this sort of technology then the possibilities to build large user groups who regularly submit content is massive especially if they have a monetary motivation.
Here is a video I uploaded directly from Nokia 6500 Classic to my YouTube account via ShoZu. Although this example is a bit dull it was done in no time and was really easy.
From my experience of ShoZu so far it’s going to make the process of being involved in citizen journalism and sharing content made on your mobile very easy which will no doubt get more people involved.
