Blottr is one of the citizen journalism websites based in the UK. Most of the citizen journalists on the site are from the UK, but it does have international presence with bloggers or "Blottrers" from other countries. The citizen journalists collaborate and report on the news based on their own community and location and other contributors can add to the story if they happen to know anything about the issue. Thus, it becomes a true citizen journalistic collaborative effort on the platform.
Blottr was started by London-based entrepreneur Adam Baker back in September of 2010. Now almost a year later, it has grown beyond what he had initially thought for. This year in May, the startup had £1m in investment. Hence, things are really bright for the collaborative journalism site. It has decent standing in the social media of today with 1.4 unique visits a month in the UK alone and this traffic is merely from the eight cities in the UK, which are Birmingham, Bristol, Cardiff, Edinburgh, Leeds, Leicester, London and Manchester.
Now, the good news for the French citizen journalists is that Blottr has launched a similar localized version in their country. It is now live (blottr.fr), but the official launch ceremony will be held in Paris next week on Monday. The first three cities to be included are Paris, Lyon and Marseille. Baker wants to the site to expand to other parts of Europe, but with one step at a time. In the course of the next six months, the citizen journalism service will be extended to include Germany, which might launch on October 24 (blottr.de) with German cities, Berlin, Frankfurt, Hamburg and Munich to be started off with initially.
The actual target is to get to 10 countries and 50 cities within the coming six months. To look after the success of the launch Blottr has got separate 'Country Manager' from France and Germany that will take charge of the operations. They are not new to the service as they had been working in the London office previously. In order for the site to be more approachable to the local public in these respective countries, the help of translators was taken to facilitate in giving each site a local touch. The users of course will be using the site in their own languages.
There are mobile apps of Blottr available as well, which were launched in July. With the expansion of the service to new countries, apps for these states will also be developed and are expected to come out before the end of this year. With the launch to new countries, Blottr will get around 250,000 unique visits and around 500,000 page-views within a month. The growth is expected to be positive and consistent.