International crowd-curated video news service opens Cairo bureau

Newstag, a Stockholm-based crowd-curated news service, is opening a subsidiary in Cairo, Egypt to handle its incoming video news content.

Newstag’s pioneering and innovative approach to sharing news through social media will bring together video news stories from professional content producers around the world, including AP, AFP and Reuters.

The six-strong Cairo-based team will be responsible for handling, verifying and tagging stories as they arrive in one central location from all over the world. The multilingual team will operate round-the-clock handling thousands of stories each week from seven continents in as many time zones.

Egypt has been pioneering journalism and media in the Arab world for decades and increasingly the country is becoming recognised as a hub for producing and handling video content from Europe, Africa and Asia. More recently with its growing IT sector, Egypt is gaining a reputation for technological expertise.

The multinational team is made up of editors from around the world who have chosen to be based in Cairo for their work in journalism and media. They will also provide bespoke production and post-production services in Egypt and the region as a whole.

“Cairo is booming again: Egypt is at the crossroads of East and West and there are so many talented individuals in this city. This megapolis with its tens of millions of inhabitants is a great centre from which to understand the world in a more nuanced way. This is at the heart of Newstag’s philosophy,” says CEO and Founder, Henrik Eklund.

Chairman and Founder Camilla Dahlin-Andersson, who has had a long career in social services and academia, added: “We are taking our first steps towards serving this dynamic market and continent and this is a significant and exciting move for Newstag.”

The opening of the Cairo bureau follows a $1.3m investment into Newstag from a group of private and institutional investors. In recent months, the company’s rapidly expanded its network of commercial and content partners as it gears up to launch its application.

Newstag’s ‘mobile-first’ service will enable users to create their own personalised ‘tagstream’ – or TV Channel – sharing the stories that they care about among their social networks. By radically rebalancing the traditional relationships between industry stakeholders, Newstag also offers users a unique opportunity to have a real impact on the world around them through the tagging brands and NGOs.