Cover It Live for live games

[UIScribe26]

Do any of you have experience with Cover It Live? I've heard mixed reviews. I'm planning on using it at next week's Big Ten women's basketball tournament. For those of you who have used it, is there a fair amount of interaction with fans, etc during a live event? Thanks.

 

[BB Bobcat]

I've used it, and it works pretty well.

If you get a lot of people chiming in and you plan to interact with readers, it can really take your concentration from the game, though.

 

[Precious Roy]

Completely second what Bobcat said. If you have someone doing the gamer and you are just doing the chat and a blog or something then this is something great to do. If you are in charge of the gamer, then this is something you likely don't want to do. Love the interface, I use it before some of our games and sign off just before the game starts so people can talk about the league and the game coming up.

 

[SeanKennedy]

Yeah, if you're going to try and do one, I'd recommend dedicating someone to running one. Can't have a writer trying to keep track of stats etc. and trying to run the chat.

As for the amount of interaction: Depends on how much regular traffic you get, or how much you promote it through Twitter/Facebook and print/online refers. And, of course, the amount of interest in the event you're trying to cover with a live chat.

Have had great experiences with it.

 

[mjslovin91]

I love Cover It Live. If you get readers involved early, you've got them for the duration. It's a great tool.

 

[JRoyal]

We used it for a live chat on Friday night's during high school football season. It proved immensely popular with readers. We would update with live scores and highlights that we got from writers around the state (our guys and ones from other papers), and the readers would add in information on things we weren't covering. It worked really well, but we had one person who basically just monitored that and posted breaking news stories after the games were done. I couldn't imagine trying to cover a game and monitor the chat, though if someone else was monitoring, I could see writers being able to throw in comments now and then.

 

[Football_Bat]

CIL works great for any format. But I recommend having someone dedicated to updating it besides yourself if you're covering a game and trying to take notes, keep stats, live blog, and moderate comments, all at the same time. It sucks doing it in Texas mid-level prep football, and it would suck that much harder at anything bigger.

 

[Appgrad05]

We run a CIL chat for every college football and basketball game. It is a cooperative effort between the guys at our paper, the student paper and an insanely popular blog. It works out that one guy does play-by-play (which becomes his notes), one guy handles the scoreboard and everyone helps out moderating. A few of us also Tweet during the game (usually timeouts). If things are going crazy or we are having Internet issues, there are a few trusted readers that have moderation rights.
Our readers are now in the thousands, but that has been developed over time. It is like anything else — you have to build the community and make it a destination.

 

[lantaur]

Just adding on to say CoverItLive is absolutely great for live events. And if you Tweet, you can have those show up in there as well. Great, great interface.

 

[mustangj17]

I've used it and it is incredibly easy. I blog I follow uses it for NCAA games and has multiple moderators and blog members signed in posting as their usual handles. There are hundreds of people on those things sometimes.

The only bad thing I have experienced is, it is blocked at my current company. I wonder how many places block it since it is a blog? May impact web hits.

 

[lantaur]

The only bad thing I have experienced is, it is blocked at my current company. I wonder how many places block it since it is a blog? May impact web hits.

That's interesting; never heard that. Do you cut and paste the coding into one of your own blog or article pages?

 

[SeanKennedy]

Wow, how do they block it? Usually blogs/papers copy in the coding to their own blog.