It was announced this week that FreeRange Communications has launched the FreeRange Mobile Publishing Platform for commercial availability. According to industry analysts, the release could provide a significant step forward for online publishers to “seamlessly extend their content to mobile consumers.”
In conjunction with the release, FreeRange Communications has also announced new customers: The Wall Street Journal Digital Network, Fierce Markets, and PaidContent.org, who join NewsGator, Travelocity, and Portland Trailblazers in their adoption of the platform.
In a nutshell, FreeRange provides “complete mobile coverage for publishers, delivering branded content to a wide range of mobile devices, including BlackBerry, Windows Mobile, Symbian, Palm, and iPhone handsets.”
The perceived advantage of The FreeRange Mobile Publishing Platform is it’s ability to remove the barriers typically present for effectively pushing web content out to the mobile device marketplace by leveraging existing web content, eliminating mobile content management system requirements and operating in a software-as-a-service model to create zero impact on customer IT resources.
The Wall Street Journal Digital Network (in case you’re wondering) uses the FreeRange Mobile Publishing Platform to provide a WSJ.com-branded mobile application that automatically downloads optimized content to a user’s BlackBerry device. Users receive immediate access to business, finance and technology news and analysis from WSJ.com as well as MarketWatch.com, Barrons.com and AllThingsD.com. Headlines, article summaries and previously downloaded stories are always accessible, even if out of wireless coverage.
The commercial availability of this platform will hopefully enable up-and-coming mobile marketers (big and small) to experience success similar to the mobile endeavors of one of the nation’s most venerable publications.
