Editor’s Note : Frrole, an India based social local newspaper, has launched its much awaited iPhone and Android apps. Frrole has been growing at 40 percent month and month and is expected to cross a million monthly unique visitors on the web in March. The apps are expected to further speed up the pace of growth.
Frrole, the Twitter-based news discovery service, has announced the launch of its iPhone and Android apps, bringing the much acclaimed product to the growing set of mobile news consuming audience. While the apps provide localized news editions for 55 cities and 6 countries just like the website, they additionally allow the user to personalize news discovery around preferred locations, categories and even news sources. Channels like Business & Sports from UK, or local Headlines from New York can be defined and saved, and any of the saved channels can be selected just at the click of a button. The iPhone app also provides an innovative feature for the global traveller, where it automatically provides local destination news in case the user travels to any of the 55 cities that Frrole currently covers.
With the help of Ventures Africa, the Nigeria based Pan-African business magazine and news service, Frrole will now spread news from Africa to the world stage. When a user selects ‘World’ as the location, he will now be displayed popular news from Africa, along with those from other continents, letting people across the world know what Africa is talking about. Frrole has bigger plans for Africa and will soon create separate local news pages for a few selected African countries.
Frrole also continues to maintain an impressive growth rate. It has touched 700,000 monthly unique users every month, with more than 50 percent of the users coming from the US and almost 20 percent from UK and Canada, establishing its increasing popularity in the world’s most developed markets. In the last 2 months alone, it has seen its popularity go up by more than 100 percent. Apart from North America, Europe and India, where Frrole continues to grow at a fast clip, it has also started getting substantial traffic from South East Asia and Australia, expanding its global reach.
The Frrole team has been very clear about their vision of creating a ‘world view’ of news discovery right from the beginning. Amarpreet Kalkat, Frrole’s co-creator explains “We want to democratize news. Multiple other news apps can tell you what your personal graph and mainstream media are talking about, but Frrole is the only one that can go beyond them to tell you what the rest of the world is really talking about”.
Frrole has earlier been featured on TV programs like New York-based CNY Central’s Digital Download. Technology and Social Media blogs like The Next Web, Lifehacker, Yahoo Small Business and The Social Media Examiner have also recommended Frrole, many times terming it as “the future of social news”.
