Storyful And FireChat Partner For Live News Gathering

SAN FRANCISCO and NEW YORK, March 25, 2015 /PRNewswire/ -- Open Garden, the creator of FireChat, and Storyful, the first news agency of the social media age, today announce a strategic partnership to develop live news gathering. Using the latest in disruptive technology, this partnership takes news gathering one step further in today's social-media driven society, by way of an Open Live Newsroom. 

From Moscow to Hong Kong, FireChat has proven its value as a gathering point when important news breaks. Storyful will create an Open Live Newsroom on FireChat, making it easier for journalists to engage in live conversations with citizen journalists and communities around the world. Storyful's technology monitors the social web and finds news in real-time to assist media with their stories while sorting the news from the noise. The FireChat app enables live and interactive communications between people and without the need for Internet access or cellular phone coverage.

"Our mission is to find the most authentic voices on the social web and connect them with the world's newsrooms. Many of the most important events happen in situations where communications are difficult. FireChat makes it easy to identify events as they happen and connect with people on location. FireChat's simple, live and interactive format makes it ideal for news sourcing and verification," said Rahul Chopra, CEO of Storyful.

Storyful is welcoming social journalists from across the world to join its Open Live Newsroom. This chatroom focuses on specific events and locations for live conversations between newsmakers and news gatherers.

"As we've seen in recent event, news is often broken first on FireChat. We're excited to work with the team at Storyful as we pave the way for a new kind of communications that is instantly accessible and driven by social media," said Micha Benoliel, cofounder and CEO of Open Garden. "We hope that this will serve free expression around the world."

FireChat is a free application for Android and iOS devices. You can download it here: https://opengarden.com/firechat

Storyful's Open Live Newsroom is live at http://firech.at/Storyful

About Open Garden and FireChat
Open Garden Inc. is a San Francisco based startup dedicated to connecting the next billions of mobile devices with peer-to-peer connections. FireChat is the first messaging app that works off-the-grid. It enables people to communicate even without any Internet or cellular connection, by allowing mobile phones to create their own peer-to-peer network.

Launched in March 2014, FireChat has reached the top 10 amongst social networking apps in 124 countries around the world. FireChat was recently awarded an Innovation Award at SXSW.

About Storyful:
Storyful, a division of News Corp, is the first news agency of the social media age. Founded in 2010 and based in Dublin, Ireland, Storyful comprises a team of technologists and journalists across Asia, Europe and the United States who discover, verify, acquire and distribute timely and relevant video and user-generated content to newsrooms, advertisers and brands. Via proprietary technology and journalistic expertise, Storyful provides social media dashboards, real-time discovery tools, feeds and analytics to customers across multiple platforms. Storyful was acquired by News Corp in December 2013. Storyful was recently one of top ten most innovative companies in social media by Fast Company.

Press Contacts:
Storyful: [email protected]
Open Garden: [email protected]

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SOURCE Open Garden

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