latimes.com Gets Personal with Mixx
LOS ANGELES and MCLEAN, Va. December 4, 2007 The Los Angeles Times Media Group (https://www.latimes.com) has joined forces with Mixx (https://www.mixx.com), a leading social news website, in an online content and co-marketing alliance which puts readers of the nation’s largest metropolitan daily newspaper in control of their own personal blend of online news, information, photos and videos. It has also been announced that The Times has taken a small equity stake in Mixx, details of which were not disclosed.
Launched in October, and created and designed by a team of industry veterans with deep Internet, news publishing and online content expertise including former executives from Yahoo!, AOL, USA TODAY and The Associated Press, Mixx allows users to discover personally relevant media and interact within networks of friends, colleagues and people who share their common interests. Latimes.com readers will now have direct access to Mixx’s networking and personalization tools through integrated functionality on story pages. In addition, cross-promotional traffic will be maximized by optimization of Times content for searches from within the Mixx site.
“Mixx is leading the way in making social news accessible to a mainstream audience, and we are pleased to have formed a strategic and progressive arrangement with them,” said Jason Oberfest, managing director of product strategy for Los Angeles Times Interactive. “Latimes.com’s collaboration with Mixx perfectly complements our mission of providing our readers with the kind of content, services and tools that add up to a great online experience. In order for news, stories and videos to be relevant, they must be personal, local and timely and content must be flexible and compelling.”
“While lots of publishers are talking about the importance of social networking and personalization of online content, the Los Angeles Times is doing it,” said Chris McGill, CEO and founder and Mixx. “By joining forces with Mixx, latimes.com is able to leverage their existing content to even broader audiences that in turn greatly expand their media monetization options, while creating personally relevant networks of readers within the Los Angeles Times reader base. We’re excited to work with The Times.”
Mixx offers latimes.com readers additional tools to help harness and organize the vast assortment of internet news, information and multimedia content. Users who click through to the Mixx site from Los Angeles Times story pages can submit items without any requirement for registration, and quickly search and browse through content from Southern California and beyond. Upon registration for a free Mixx account, users can also expand their social networking and bookmarking options by creating and participating in public and private groups, networking with other Mixx users who share their interests or live nearby, joining the lively discussion by making comments about items they find interesting, and by voting for or against news, images and videos that they like or dislike.
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About the Los Angeles Times
The Los Angeles Times is the largest metropolitan daily newspaper in the country, with a daily readership of 2.2 million and 3.2 million on Sunday. The Los Angeles Times and its media businesses and affiliates including latimes.com, The Envelope, Times Community Newspapers, Hoy, and California Community News reach approximately 8.1 million or 62% of all adults in the Southern California marketplace.
The Pulitzer Prize-winning Los Angeles Times, has been covering Southern California for over 125 years and is part of Tribune Company ( NYSE: TRB), one of the country’s leading media companies with businesses in publishing, the Internet and broadcasting. Additional information about the Los Angeles Times is available at www.latimes.com/mediacenter.
About Mixx
Mixx is owned by Recommended Reading, Inc., a privately-held company based in McLean, Virginia, dedicated to connecting users and publishers in an ever more crowded digital media environment. Mixx is a customizable social media website that empowers both users and publishers of mass market content with an unprecedented blend of user-recommended media, online social networking and comprehensive personalization tools. It is built on a fundamentally different structure that allows publishers to drive highly qualified traffic to their sites while transforming their audiences into grassroots evangelists. Mixx users engage in an intuitive, threaded experience as a result of their participation in community activities around topics they define, and creation of their own interest-based start pages with customized content submission and delivery. More information is available at www.mixx.com or info@mixx.com.
Mixx is a trademark or registered trademark of Recommended Reading, Inc. in the United States and/or other countries. Los Angeles Times is a trademark or registered trademark of Tribune Company in the United States and/or other countries. All other trademarks or registered trademarks are property of their respective holders.
Contact
Thomas Morelli (415) 355-1082 thomas@morelli-pr.com
Nancy Sullivan 213-23706160 nancy.sullivan@latimes.com
