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Our
local paper did what every other smaller, regional paper
did and made a website. They weren't getting much
traffic and coming from a long and may we add, proud
history of local news, they we're exactly sure of how to
make the jump to the web. They just knew they had to
get there and pretty quickly. There was one online
feature, however, that was very popular. 100K hits in
no time from a pretty thinly produced online piece on
local high school football. It's the only thing that
really worked for them and they didn't know exactly how
to take advantage of this accidental strike of online
gold.
Fast
forward a little bit and we have something even better,
the Sports Channel on the Zipper smart phone app. This
is really the direction we need to go for anything local
and let's face it, a big part of our local is local
sports. As much as I like the pro's, there's something
very cool about going to a local high school football or
basketball game. You might even know some of the kids
playing pretty well. Extra bonus is the fact that
they're not going to have a walk-out this season. Local
sports is a big part of many people's universe and only
so much of it ever gets covered in your newspaper or the
nightly local news. That's sad. JV girls volleyball
may not mean enough to the local newspaper or station
but it sure means a lot to the player who's training and
going all out for her favorite sport. Why should the
local newspaper and station dictate what's important
enough to cover. Isn't this the time of internet where
the masses dictate what they get and everyone has a
stage and or bully pulpit? We say yes, yes, and a
resounding YES.
So
how does the Sports Channel work on the Zipper app for
both ITunes and Droid markets? It's simple and yet
powerful. With the Zipper app for local news and
gossip, you can narrow all the available Zips (posts
about local news and gossip) according to pre-set
channels. One of these channels is local. This means
the Zipper app will automatically filter just the zips
that relate to local sports news and gossip. How is
this valuable? It could be a running play by play of
the game you can attend because you're at work. How
cool would that be? As each play occurs, someone
watching would add a zip to the running thread to show
what's going on. People can add pictures if they like
and even video. How many times have you tried to find
out who won a particular game. You can get a hold of
your friends that played or were at the game. The
school website hasn't been updated yet. It's ridiculous
not to be able to get this kind of information in real
time. Bring in the zipper. Narrow the channel to
sports and maybe even preset locations you set up for
High School Football as an example. There's a constant
stream of information there with everything related to
your high school football team including...tonight's
final score and even all the stats that went towards
that score.
There's also local sports news and gossip on players.
Were there injuries. Did someone get benched. Who had
food poisoning and had to sit out? Why did that brawl
break out over by the locker room. What do you mean
there's a star recruit from another school who just
transferred? it goes on and on and the Zipper with its
Sports channel is the just the place to report on it and
find it right now!
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