Emap will relaunch its popular FHM mobile service next month to focus on user-generated video.The revamped offering will show the first fruits of Emap's acquisition of mobile user-generated content business YoSpace - bought for £8.7 million in February, emulating, in part, it's See Me TV service.
The current FHM site, which was launched in 2004, allows users to comment on photographs uploaded by other people.
Speaking today at an AOP forum, Mike Burgess, creative director of Emap Mobile, said user-generated content was key to the site's success and that Emap was keen to develop further community aspects with its new site by providing some personalisation tools.
"There has been an awful lot of activity since we launched into mobile but the most significant thing we have done is the purchase of YoSpace. One of the first things we are going to do is relaunch FHM in August," he told delegates.
"What we have done is take a lot of the functionality that YoSpace offers and we have expanded into video. People will also be able to post video and send messages to each other and create their own profiles."
The content uploaded to the site - a large proportion of which is images of scantily clad women - will continue to be humanly moderated, Mr Burgess added, to ensure content meets legal and editorial guidelines.
Emap has 12 of its brands on mobile platforms including: Kerrang, FHM, Q, Empire and Heat.
Many of the brands have leading profiles on pages provided by the large mobile phone companies that, more often than not, are the first point-of-call for mobile internet users.
However, the future of the group's mobile portfolio, Mr Burgess added, would eventually be independent of these portals.
Mobile networks expected adoption of flat-rate tariffs for data packages, he added, would encourage greater surfing by mobile users and allow the eventual development of ad-funded mobile sites.
Emap was planning to launch an off portal mobile TV channel in the near future, he added.
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