|
It
sounds a little spooky. What if there are eyes
everywhere? Before you start thinking it's just another
remake of George Orwell's 1984, let's think of both the
pro's and con's of the Zipper smart phone app and having
eyes and cameras every where. To some extent, with cell
phones, you already have this and Twitter and Facebook
already provide a platform to display these images. The
deal is to make this local and the Zipper smart phone
app aims to do this. So let's dig into both the good
and bad of having eyes everywhere for local news.
First, let's lead with an example. You're kicking back
at a restaurant at an outdoor table. Everything's
pretty sweet and the place is packed. Let's say it's
3rd St Promenade in Santa Monica. 1000's of people
everywhere. Your eye catches this giant, yellow (sorry,
Golden) 70's Skylark which is slowly veering into the
pedestrian area. You figure it's going to readjust any
second now but it keeps coming. YOu panic but the
people in front of the car are 30 yards away and they
won't hear you anyway. The driver is quite a bit older
and obvious disoriented. You pull out your smart phone
to capture it in case the cops need to know what's going
on. The car avoids people but runs right into the the
front of a Forever 21 store window. There's a loud
crash because even at only 10 mile per hour, some
mannequins are going to meet their end. You flip to the
Zipper and add a quick post with a picture attached.
People on the other side are also rezipping and posting
about the 76 year old smashing the Forever 21. I guess
their store name was a bit of embellishment. The
traffic starts to back up where the Skylark juts out
into the street and before long, not much is getting
through. On the Zipper, people start to plot ways to
get around and better routes now that the street is
completely backed up. That's the Zipper and that's what
happens when you have eyes everywhere. Is this good or
bad?
Well, it's good for the people stuck in traffic to know
what's going on. It's also good for people down the
block to see what all the commotion is about. Maybe not
as good for the Skylark driver but everyone saw what
happened anyway. Eyes everywhere shouldn't be an issue
unless you're doing something really wrong. No one's
going to post about you drinking a Capuchino unless it's
5 feet tall or something. That's part of the definition
of local news to begin with. It has to be something
newsworthy. of course, not everything is life and death
(or Forever 21 destruction). Some things are just
really cool to see and they're fleeting. This is where
eyes everywhere can be sweet. Maybe there's a sweet new
piece of graffiti or a special 2 for 1 deal at a local
restaurant. Maybe something wild happened at the local
park or Le Bron James showed up for a pick up game
downtown. The Zipper is the fast way to capture that on
a local basis since there is no pre-existing
relationship needed except for a locale. We all have
one of those. Eyes everywhere then gives you a vantage
point of all the interesting things going on in your
area as they occur. Hard to see a downside there.
|
