Almost everyone that has Internet has access to news, whether it’s global or local. But sometimes, you would prefer to receive news that is relevant to your immediate community and also crowd-sourced through people who actually live there and know what’s going on. That’s what Google is hoping to achieve with their new experimental platform called Bulletin. While it’s still in early access mode, the tech giant is hoping those in the test communities would take to it and use the app not just to access local news but to actually contribute to building it.
Google’s official description of the Bulletin app is that it is meant “for contributing hyperlocal stories about your community, for your community”. You can tell a story through pictures, videos, and text which you can post directly from your smartphone and publish to the Bulletin. Basically, you’re blogging about breaking news or an event that’s happening in your area without necessarily having to create a blog.
While people are already doing this through Twitter or Facebook, whenever there’s breaking news or there’s a local event that they want to promote, Google is hoping that people will do it on their platform as well or may prefer to do this exclusively there if they want to try something new. There have been several platforms that tried to do this, but monetizing on something like local news has been problematic. But then again, this is Google so they have more resources.
We’re not yet sure how robust or user-friendly Bulletin will be, as it is still in a limited pilot program in Nashville, Tennessee and Oakland, California. You will also have to request for early access by signing up with them.
SOURCE: Google
