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NewsCorp today announced their acquisition of Storyful, the social news agency and verification platform,

Storyful, which first launched in 2010, will continue to work with its current partners while complementing News Corp's existing video services, including WSJ Live.

"Storyful will remain a standalone company and brand at News Corp," Raju Narisetti, senior vice-president for Strategy at NewsCorp, told Journalism.co.uk via email.

Describing himself as "thrilled" at the announcement, Narisetti said the full Storyful team would be joining NewsCorp, bringing "its core ethos of embracing verified user-generated news and video content into News Corp and its global newsrooms."

News Corp described the acquisition as "accelerating News Corp's digital transformation and video strategy" in a press release announcing the development that detailed how, in 2013, "verified user-generated videos managed by Storyful [have] generated 750 million views for its partners."

"Our global team of journalists will continue to cover real-time news 24/7," said Storyful chief-executive Mark Little in a blogpost accompanying the announcement. "Our technology teams will continue to build tools to power the newsrooms of the future."



Little and executive editor David Clinch will be joined by Rahul Chopra, News Corp's senior vice president of video, in managing Storyful's operations. Chopra will also assume the post of chief revenue officer at the company, while additional business development staff will be hired in New York.

"Over the next several months, you will see how News Corp's scale and reach will not only help Storyful remain the gold standard in user generated content verification services to current and future newsroom customers all over the world," said Narisetti, "but help expand its tools, services and dashboards to brands, marketers, advertisers, as well as expand into new geographies and languages."

Storyful was acquired for just over £15m (€18m, almost $25m) and will continue to operate out of Dublin.
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