Several NBC owned-and-operated stations have teamed up with Instagr.am to solicit viewer photos to use on-air and online. While the station sites have their own photo upload capability, the new partnership taps a thriving community of 15 million mobile phone photographers on Instagram.
For example, NBC stations in NY, DC, Miami and Connecticut are inviting viewers to use the app to snap their favorite photos of holiday lights. If you’ve used Instagram, you’ll know you can’t “send” a photo to someone, but you can add a hashtag. In NBC’s case, stations asking users to include localized hashtags on the photo so staff can discover them. NBC says most of its stations have integrated Instagram into their production systems for a seamless way to port them on the air.
“We’re excited to see the NBC-owned stations using the power of mobile photography to add another dimension to news reporting,” said Kevin Systrom, CEO of Instagram. Adds Greg Scholl, President of Local Integrated Media at NBC Owned Television Stations, “Instagram is easy to use, widespread and makes photos look good. We can now bring these fantastic images into our local news broadcasts and easily share our viewers’ photos widely.”
NBC says it’s been experimenting with Instagram over the last several months. NBC San Diego, for example, invited music fans to send in photos from concerts.
Several TV news organizations have been very active on Instagram, from ABC World News (92,107 followers) and NBC News (77,787 followers) to CNN iReport (77,114 followers). CNN iReport and Breaking News (where I work) have been asking users to hashtag photos.
Top on my personal Instagram feature wishlist: the ability to “reblog” a photo (like Tumblr) so media companies can easily redistribute photos hashtagged from users.
