The Financial Times’ award-winning 24-hour news service fastFT launches today on the Samsung Gear S. The app is powered by Spritz, the text-streaming technology that delivers written content to the reader one word at a time at their desired speed.
Launched as a mobile-first product, fastFT has an engaged audience with readers consuming triple the amount of content than the average subscriber. More than half of its traffic comes via smartphones and tablets.
For the first time, Spritz is partnering with a publisher to bring fast and focused news and information to Samsung Gear S users on the move.
FT chief executive John Ridding said: “Streaming fastFT through Spritz on wearables gives our readers the opportunity to be first to try an innovative new method of reading. It supports our strategy of making FT journalism available in whatever format our readers choose, and reflects the rapid growth of mobile, which now counts for almost half of all our digital traffic.”
Spritz co-founder and CEO Frank Waldman said: “By partnering with the Financial Times on the fastFT app for the Samsung Gear S, we’re reinventing the way people read their favourite content on wearables and other mobile devices. Spritz is helping publishers and brands succeed in this new digital space by delivering information such as news, email and social on small screens in an easy and efficient way while consumers are on the go.”
The fastFT app will be the only news app featured at the global Samsung Unpacked event on 3 September.
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For more information contact:
Spritz: Lowell Eschen
lowellseschen@gmail.com
(+1) 917-403-4090
FT: Kristina Eriksson
kristina.eriksson@ft.com
(+44) 20 7873 4961
About the Financial Times:
The Financial Times, one of the world’s leading business news organisations, is recognised internationally for its authority, integrity and accuracy. Providing essential news, comment, data and analysis for the global business community, the FT has a combined paid print and digital circulation of 677,000 (Deloitte assured, Q2 2014). Mobile is an increasingly important channel for the FT, driving 60 per cent of subscriber consumption, almost 50 per cent of total traffic and 20 per cent of new digital subscriptions. FT education products now serve two thirds of the world’s top 50 business schools. For news about the FT follow @FTPressOffice.
About Spritz:
Founded in 2012 by Frank Waldman, a serial entrepreneur and MIT alum, Maik Maurer, scientist at the Technical University of Munich (TUM), and his colleague Matthias Klein, Spritz’s mission is to change the way people read on mobile, wearable and other devices by making communication faster, easier and more effective. The company holds multiple pending patents in its portfolio including its innovative text-streaming technology that presents individual words at the reader’s comfortable speed for an all-around efficient and comprehensive reading experience. This technology has been researched, developed and tested in Boston, Munich, and Salt Lake City. Privately funded, the investment was led by Founder and Chairman of Digicel, Denis O’Brien. For more information about Spritz, please visit www.spritzinc.com or follow @spritzinc.