Nieman Foundation at Harvard
Google is testing a hyperlocal news app called Bulletin in Nashville and Oakland. It’s an “app for telling a story by capturing photos, videoclips and text right from your phone, published straight to the web (without having to create a blog or build a website).” If you’re thinking “sounds like [Twitter/Snapchat/fill in any other company here],” as I was, one difference seems to be the more open publishing format: “Bulletin stories are public and easy to discover: on Google search, through social networks, or via links sent by email and messaging apps.” They appear to be hooked in with Google News. (I also saw comparisons to NextDoor, which again is private; NextDoor posts can’t be found in Google search.)
Google announced Bulletin at an event in Nashville Thursday, which Slate has video of. There are some (boring) examples of what the stories look like here If you’re in either Nashville or Oakland, you can request access, but it’s Android-only for now.
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