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October 2009 -- Smub, Inc., a company specializing in developing tools to simplify the sharing of media -- digital or print -- with online social networks, has rolled out a new service called hy.pr.
Introduced in October at MPA's Magazine Innovation Summit, hy.pr was developed specifically to extend the reach of print publications and the life of their content by allowing readers to share links to the articles they read in print with their online social networks. According to Smub, "With hy.pr, every reader is a potential social media marketer for the publication. By providing readers the tools to push content instantly to their online social networks, hy.pr drives traffic to the publisher’s website, increases brand awareness and lowers the cost of subscriber acquisition."
As reported by Folio Magazine, to use it publishers register with hy.pr, then create custom URLs for select articles and print them in the physical edition of the magazine. When the reader wants to share the article, they can then enter the URL into a web browser, which offers the reader a "share and save" page from which they can e-mail a shortened link directly to their contacts, bookmark the link or share it among social networks such as Twitter, Facebook and Digg. Folio cites as an example, the French magazine Polka which includes the URL polka.hy.pr/punk which allows readers to then share pictures on social media sites.
According to Smub CEO Thierry Lamouline, "Our research shows that roughly 25% of all Tweets and Facebook status updates contain a link. By empowering their readers to share content, publishers will create an audience of social media marketers who actively promote publishers¹ brands, driving targeted traffic to publishers' web sites, which in turn will dramatically lower the cost of a subscriber acquisition via the web."
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