Living in the land of LiveBlog
Posted on May 9th, 2008 – 7:00 AMBy Howard
Our Live Blog experiment yesterday was an interesting one. Some of us at startribune.com had been talking for a while about when to try out the software and we figured an afternoon baseball game, when a lot of people wouldn’t be able to watch on TV, would be a good time to give it a try. More than 5,000 people — “unique visitors” is the web term — stopped by during the game and I want to thank those of you who joined in or read along. Often, there were more than 400 people at a time on the blog.
If you want to take a look at how it went, you can find our chatter by clicking here. If you weren’t watching along with us yesterday, take note of the “instant polls” that we ran throughout the game. According to a majority of those who weighed in, Thursday’s game was, in fact, over before it was over — if you scroll down to the final question. I was intrigued by how many of you said that you’re planning to take in a game on the road this season — and if someone wants to file a guest post from Colorado next weekend, I’d be thrilled to have it.
One improvement we’ll try to make next time is to put a box score and game log on the screen.
For the record, you sent in 946 messages during the LiveBlog — and almost 60 percent of them were published. The blog is a moderated forum, so all messages are looked at before being posted. I tried to keep discussion moving and not go over the same ground again and again and again. Also, some comments were simply outdated by the time I saw them and posting them on could have been confusing. It’s a little bit like talk radio, or buying concert tickets on the web, in the sense that not everyone gets through all the time.
Many of your comments were thoughtful, some of them made me (and people in the office looking over my shoulder) crack up. A few were web gems. Again, thanks for hanging with us yesterday. According to one of theinstant polls, a vast majority said they’d do it again.
Live blogging has a lot of applications and we’ll figure out how to make best use of them. I’m interested is hearing your thoughts, too.
I’ve gotta go ice my typing fingers now.
other people are here too
17 Responses to "Living in the land of LiveBlog"
Thanks for doing it, Howard. It was fun.
yeah it was definitely fun to chat while watching the gamecast, some funny comments were posted for sure.
I enjoyed it. Although I was at work [in KENTUCKY!!] at the time, and had to do actual work and not constantly read the liveblog (which meant I missed voting on a number of the polls), it was great to read comments at the same time that I was listening to the Gameday Audio (my only source of Twins broadcasts outside of them playing the Indians, when I can catch them on TV). I would participate again. And I’d try to plan it so that I actually had something to do that didn’t involve multiple applications on the computer….
It was great.
Why the hell is Rincon still with the Twins?
Awesome idea. I usually expect new software to be less reliable when first used, but it seemed to work like a charm. The polls were a nice feature, too.
Nice job, Howard.
The weeding out of comments process made it a little less than “live”, but other than that I thought it was okay for the 10 minutes I had to log on before work kicked in.
Twins are going to need a lot of offense this weekend, it appears.
Enjoyed the LiveBlog, Howard, thanks. Having to actually work through most of the game made it a bit tough to follow all of the discussion, but so be it.
I don’t mind the moderation at all. I do suspect you’ll find it even more of a challenge, however, if you do something like this in the evening where even more people can participate.
You might want to just limit the ability to comment to those who you know, in advance, to be intelligent, insightful, and literate enough to construct a sentence.
But then, I’m not sure how many people would enjoy just watching the two of us chat about the game.
I will be in Denver next weekend for the Friday and Saturday games. I’d be happy to do a guest blog. I’ll be there tonight as well in my usual Section 223.
Really enjoyed it, thank you and all the behind the scenes strib techies for making it happen.
How disruptive for the game was it for you, Howard? 900some comments are more than 100/inning and most of them were in the early innings. I would think that it is almost impossible to manage this whole thing in-between pitches and in-between inning.
Well done!
thrylos,
Thanks for your nice words. If I hadn’t been blogging, I would have been doing other work, so — even though I wasn’t really tuned into the game — I was following it more than if I hadn’t been doing the LiveBlog. The hardest part is that my TV monitor is above my desk, so that made it harder to keep up.
[Chorus of groans here: “Howard’s TV is above his desk and hard to watchhhhhh! Toooooooooooo baddddddd!”]
I’ll probably do some things differently next time. There are a couple more bells and whistles that can be trotted out. Also, I’d like to spend a bit more time answering questions and reacting/anticipating the game.
I felt a bit like Carlos Gomez. Raw and supposedly talented.
I did enjoy it but I agree that the delay because of the necessary moderation does change the WAY we commenters will have to formulate things - especially during a game when more people are participating.
I suggest that a little bit of tweaking and reorganizing might be in order to make that flow more smoothly. Whether it’s a membership device of some kind to post or something else - or even more people reading comments to post them.. who knows. I’m sure that things will fall in place because the core of the event was definitely worthwhile.
Wasn’t there for the LiveBlog, but just read it and was surprised at the generally civil tone. I expected with how yesterday’s game got away (new meaning for ‘getaway day’) that it gradually would have turned into something resembing Vikings Whine Line. Likely a sign of quality moderation that it didn’t.
Hopefully, you get a better game next time. Otherwise, LiveBlog may have to go the way of the red “Dairy Queen Softball Team” alternate jerseys.
Interesting to see that a lot of fans will be attending Twins games on the road. I was in Cleveland the last two seasons and it was a blast. There was no shortage of Twins fans either time and we kind of owned the town. Seriously, every other person I saw at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame last May was wearin some sort of Twins gear. This year, I am headed to Coors for next weekend’s series and expected to see Twins fans as well represented there.
I had a blast.
Mr.go-go-gomez of the blogosphere.
Thanks Howard that was good fun, even in a losing effort. I thought that moderation was handled well and I commend you on your multitasking abilities.
It’s a ways off but I’ll be catching the Twins in Baltimore so here’s hoping Morneau adds another medallion out on Eutaw Street.
nice job howard!! and to your helpers as well!!
Even though I was by myself working from home, it felt like I was at bar full of Twins fans and we were watching together. There was even the occasional person who just walked into the bar and said, “hey, why was Gardy ejected?” and Howard shaking his head saying, “it would take too long to explain…”
I think we covered all the gripes and biases common to a real life barstool Twins conversation, too.
new stadium can’t wait/no roof
Mauer negative/positive biases
fire Vavra/not
play Punto/not
small ball/chicks dig the long ball
