Journalism.co.uk reports that the international news agency Agence France Presse has launched an interactive website for Japanese viewers. The new site, AFP-BB integrates agency stories and photos with blogs and bulletin boards and also allows for comments from readers.

Users can also bookmark AFP photos to add to their own site and organize news pages to personal tastes.

The site's financing will be based purely on advertising revenue.

This is a notable departure for AFP, which has largely stuck to the traditional agency model of selling content to news providers, deciding to keep access to material on its homepage to a minimum and not to include advertising, unlike its rival Reuters, which connects to the consumer directly through its website.

Source: Journalism.co.uk