Another UK publisher is reporting success with WhatsApp, exceeding results on other social media channels.

The Oxford Mail - which belongs to Gannet's Newsquest subsidiary - is claiming 1265 subscribers in six continents after six months of running the service, according to The Guardian.

But despite outstanding results, publishing via WhatsApp remains clunky requiring the use of only the smartphone connected to the account. It's a problem the paper's head of content Jason Collie has partially addressed by changing his HTC for an iPhone 5S and learning shortcuts.

The growth of the WhatsApp service - based on morning and evening mail shots plus breaking news - contrasts with the paper's print circulation of 12,773 which fell 22.9 per cent in the first half of last year.

Collie says WhatsApp links bring in four or five times more clicks than the daily email bulletin, and six or seven times as much as Twitter. "The project has exceeded expectations both in the size of our audience and feedback from readers," he told The Guardian.

The BBC trialled WhatsApp during elections in India in May last year and for Ebola news in October. Collie says the service has been useful on traffic reports and to create threads on specific topics such as football and court cases. "If there's a big event going on, then that's what people really want to use it for, they keep themselves updated along with the other news stories we have," he says.