Tag: CoveritLive

Replacing CoveritLive with P2

Two days ago Demand Media acquired CoveritLive. This made some understandably bummed and concerned for the future of the tool.

We never used CoveritLive while I was at The Pioneer but I know it’s a favorite of college news organizations as well as larger media companies. It’s easy, fast to set up, and you can drop it into any existing template.

The problem is that CoveritLive is yet another corporate blogging silo. Even before it was a part of Demand Media using it still meant putting your live event coverage in a wrapper controlled by a third-party. Not the greatest idea for long-term data integrity.

I’ve never understood why more schools, organizations, and media companies don’t replace a corporate tool like CoveritLive with a open source tool. Something like a WordPress site combined with P2.

P2 is just as much, if not more, of a live blog than CoveritLive. It comes with keyboard shortcuts, real-time updates, username notifications, and more. And, because it’s a WordPress blog, each post and comment has a permalink. Score one for linking directly to a reference in the future.

Like CoveritLive, P2 allows you to easily moderate comments on a thread while also adding photos, videos, links, and audio. Your live blog can bring in content from wherever you want on the web.

If you wanted to embed comments and questions from a Twitter hashtag that’s incredibly easy as well. Just use a plugin like Blackbird Pie to embed tweets into your live stream with a simple shortcode.

If you are a student, teacher, or someone else who needs help setting up a live blog get in touch. I am happy to help show you what P2 can do and talk about why it’s good to have data on your terms.