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There's a hole in your information landscape. You can
get national and international news with ease with
resources both traditional (Reuters, AP, etc) and
non-traditional (blogs, twitter, etc). You even have
personal and immediate access to your close networks of
friends (Facebook) and colleagues (LinkedIn) ad nauseum
in case you need to know what they ate for lunch. So we
have the real far or remote covered and the real close
and personal covered. How much of your life does that
information directly affect. 5%. 10% maybe. Think
about your day to day litany of requirements, to-do's,
and obligations. Whether you're in high school or high
finance, there's a lot of news that is local but has
absolutely no relationship with those in your personal
network. That probably makes up 90% of the local news
that important to you. So how do you get that
information?
Well, there's the local newspaper or local newscast.
This works great for receiving information on someone
else's schedule which seams pretty antiquated after
having Tivo for half a decade now. The newspaper is
almost 24 hours hold and if they weren't the only game
in town for local news, we would probably use it for
kindling. In all fairness, there are stories where we
need more detail and reporting and the local news paper
still as a chokehold on this level and quality of local
news telling. The newscast is quicker but less detailed
and suffers from a greater encroachment of
sensationalism than the papers. The big local news
story is probably going to get about 15 seconds on the
newscasts but don't worry, you'll see the full 60
seconds on the dog that swims underwater. So this is
our source of real local news and there's nothing we can
do about it. Or is there.
Let's first establish what we want. We want real local
news. Check. We want it immediately. Check. We also
want to say what's important to us. The water bond
debate may not mean that much to us but the detour down
our street probably is. With the locals news provided
by papers and newscasts, not only is it old by the time
you get it, someone at the station or paper determined
what was important to you. This seems incredibly
narrowing in the world of the internet where we get to
pick what we're interested in. I may not be in to
tattoos on the local high school football teams but I
don't really have a say. This is where the zipper comes
in. Everyone has a say!
It's
a simple idea. The best source of local news are local
people (which includes you, by the way). Think about
it. To be a bit extreme, let's say you're sitting at a
coffee shop and you see smoke coming out of the store
across the way. You don't know what the deal is but it
is definitely news. You post a Zip on the zipper about
the smoke. Someone else happens to be in the restaurant
at the time and explains how the stove exploded in
flames. Another person asks why fire trucks are racing
down University Ave. You reply back to that zip with
the explanation as they pull up in front. This is all
local news in real-time and most importantly, it's
according to what's important to you. None of your
"friends" in Facebook probably know what you were even
talking about and Twitter relationships won't help much
either. Local news is dependent on perfect strangers in
your local area. With the Zipper app, your relationship
is now with the local news information, not people.
Perfect strangers can now shed a light on what you're
seeing right in front of your eyes and vice versa.
Local News just got cool!
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