Google has taken inspiration from the phrase citizen journalism and is running with it with the soft launch of an app called Bulletin.
As the name suggests, the app works like an online bulletin board, letting you post pictures, videos and text of local events for people nearby, without you having to create an account. It works a lot like a microblogging platform, giving users the ability to live blog an event or a rapidly unfolding story, such as weather updates, extraordinary volunteers, high school sports, civic meetings and social justice marches.
You’re able to write your own story and attach your own picture or video to the board, and share it across the web.
It also looks suspiciously like a social network, and we all know how that’s worked out for Google in the past. However, with its purpose focused squarely on local news, Bulletin might be more successful than any of its other previous endeavours.
Google isn’t the first tech giant trying to solve the local news sinkhole that, ironically, they’ve helped to create. Earlier this month, Facebook announced the launch of ‘Today In’, a section of the Facebook app which shows users local news vetted by the company’s news partnership.
Bulletin is currently only being tested in a limited pilot capacity, and is only available to people in Nashville, Tennessee, and Oakland, California. If you happen to reside in one of those cities, you can apply for early access. For the rest of us, we’ll have to wait, seeing as there’s currently no word on a UK release.
Disclaimer: Some pages on this site may include an affiliate link. This does not effect our editorial in any way.
