Live Blogging, Etc.
Although I’ve done a few, I’m not much a fan of live blogs. The form seems too of-the-moment, prone to near-instant staleness, and it’s tricky, keeping up with the flow of whatever happening and doing so quickly and pithily and with some depth. But, I’d been curious for some time about Cover It Live, the live blogging service I used on Monday, and the Eclipse Awards seemed a good spot to experiment. The results were mixed …
On the positive side: Cover It Live has a decent mobile interface, which made it possible to update from the backstage or ballroom, it’s easy to add feeds from services such as Twitter (as well as live video streaming), and photos posted via other services pop up in the stream. The best feature was its handling of comments, which appeared throughout the blog, chat-like. (My thanks to everyone who participated!)
On the negative side: This probably says more about how I prefer to work, but I found Cover It Live made me feel somewhat pressured to be on the blog at all times — updating it, approving comments — and that I was fiddling with the service (and Twitter) on my phone far more than I would have liked. Instead of following connections or observing a scene from the corner, making notes and taking photos all the while that I would later turn into posts, I felt I was doing a lot of tapping without adding a lot of substance. Not good.
Would I use Cover It Live again? As much as I liked the appearance of the comments in the stream and the interactions among visitors, probably not. For a blogger dedicated to being online for the duration of a live blog, I can see it being a nifty tool for fostering chat around an event, but for a blogger who expects to move around at an event and update occasionally, the usual means of posting, augmented by Twitter and a camera, seems more than adequate.
Social Media, Pro and Con
The annual TRA simulcasting conference is being held in Saratoga Springs in a couple weeks and I’ve been invited to participate in a panel on social media. While I have a general idea of where the conversation may drift and what points I’d like to make, I’d also like to go into the discussion with other perspectives in mind. To that end, I’d love to hear from fellow fans, either in comments below or via email (railbird [@] jessicachapel [.] com), about what in social media and racing is working — what do you find useful or meaningful? — and what isn’t. I’m particularly curious to hear about perceived limitations, either in what is being done or what is possible …
10/6/09 Postscript: Thanks and much appreciation to everyone who took time to send emails or comment below. The panel will be the morning of Wednesday, October 14. I’ll post a wrap-up and my notes sometime after.
Online Only
Pull the Pocket points to interesting news on the sulky side: The magazine Harness Edge is going online only beginning in August, a move its publisher is phrasing in positive terms:
“No longer will be there be a subscription charge. And the new format is a major bonus for advertisers because there are no longer limitations. Anyone, anywhere in the world can view the publication which means unlimited exposure,” said publisher Harold Howe.
“Now that there are no printing or mailing costs we are able to dramatically reduce advertising charges. In this embattled economy that is terrific news for the Standardbred horse industry.”
While merely the latest in what’s an ever-growing general list of print publications shifting to web-only models due to cost pressures and declining revenues, Harness Edge is the first publication in racing, thoroughbred or harness, to make the jump.
In other web news: Noticed this a few days ago, but NYRA announced today that house handicapper Andy Serling can be found on Twitter. According to the press release, “Serling’s Twitter entries will use the hashtags #belmont, #saratoga, and #aqueduct depending on to what track the tweet pertains. There will also be messages with hashtags corresponding to other NYRA topics, such as #travers and #alabama.” Savvy! What’s not is that Serling isn’t (yet) following a single tweeter back. Maybe once he settles in …
Speaking of Twitter, DRF makes its first foray onto the service with @DRFInsidePost, the feed for its new blog, Inside Post, which promises “real-time racing information” Wednesday through Sunday. So far, the DRF handicappers and reporters contributing to the site are showing a lot of gusto for the live-blog form. It’ll be interesting to see if they (or their readers) can keep up such an enthusiastic pace five days a week.
In other racing news: Now that Rachel Alexandra is declared for the Haskell, Monmouth has a new goal for its big summer race. “Now that we have Summer Bird and Rachel Alexandra,” said track president Bob Kulina, “we’re going after Mine That Bird again.” A rematch, all three? That would be must-see.
So Simple
… and yet so effective:
I’ve been trying to avoid too many Twitter mentions in this space, even though I believe the micro-service is a disruptive, adaptable form of communication that’s reshaping how networks and groups exchange information, because this is still supposed to be a blog about racing, not social media, but I can’t resist pointing out these recent posts from @NYRAcomm. Each illustrates well how a racetrack can engage its audience in just 140 characters, conveying information directly to the people most interested in it. As a supplemental marketing or news channel, it doesn’t get much better, or much easier.
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Jessica Chapel writes and edits in Massachusetts. Railbird is a Thoroughbred horse racing blog published from June 2004 to July 2019. More / Contact
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