VOA Mobile Site Gets New Look, Features

Mobile sites are offered for most of VOA's 45 broadcast languages, including Spanish, Mandarin, English, French and Farsi.

Listening to your favorite VOA programs, reading headlines from around the world, or keeping up with science and technology, are now easier than ever on your smart phone with Voice of America’s new improved mobile site.

“The site is now more organized and user friendly,” says VOA Director of Digital Strategy Matthew Baise.

With just one touch, you can find stories about arts and entertainment, listen to a world news roundup, or catch the latest edition of Larry London’s Border Crossings Music show.

“One of the nice things about the upgrade,” Baise says, “is that it delivers an optimized experience based on the type of phone you have. The presentation is adjusted automatically.”

The new mobile site also gives VOA’s many language services the ability to customize the way they present information. Stories can quickly be grouped by subject, region or whatever works best for the user.

“Our audience on mobile increased dramatically following the deadly bomb blast at the Boston Marathon,” says Indonesian Service Web Manager Ade Astuti, “partly because we were able to highlight all of our stories on the bombing in one category, so they were easy to find.”

VOA Director David Ensor says, “The new mobile site adds to the stable of digital products we are offering. Our goal is to stay ahead of the curve by adding products that give our audience the news and information they want on the platforms they like.”

Last month, VOA introduced a new SMS headline service in Nigeria, one of the countries where mobile phone use has grown sharply, and many users prefer text messaging. In Mali, VOA recently introduced special Songhai language updates on its Mali 1 mobile service, which is available in areas not easily reached by radio broadcasts.

VOA broadcasts around the world in 45 languages on radio, television, the Internet, and increasingly on mobile.

For more information contact Kyle King at the VOA Public Relations office in Washington at (202) 203-4959, or write kking@voanews.com. For more information about VOA visit our Public Relations website at www.insidevoa.com, or the main VOA news site at www.voanews.com.

(This release was originally published on www.insidevoa.com)