You\’re probably going to test the Zipper water by reading local news and local gossip posts that other people have posted. That\’s how it usually starts. Eventually (maybe immediately for the brazen), you\’re going to want to actually comment or better yet, you may even have local news insight that no one else helps. It\’s time to step up to the plate and add your first Zip post. Now, you\’re officially a local news reporter all from your smart phone app. Power to the thumbs!

So you\’re sitting in a parking lot anticipating your 32 ounce Dr Pepper when you see a giant 18 wheeler drive right through the front of the 7 Eleven right in front of you. No one was hurt (Thank goodness). You want to add it to the Zipper since it is local news and after all, how random! You pull out your Iphone and switch off the Katy Perry song that\’s blaring. Switch over to the Zipper app and boom, you have the main news window. First thing to decide is whether you just post to the main window or do you narrow it down to one of the channels which act like category filters. Think of the Jeopardy game where they have questions grouped by category. In this case, we have answers (Jeopardy kind of does as well but you get the picture) grouped by category to look at. Some of the defaults are ready to roll. What exactly is an 18 wheeler smashing through a 7 Eleven behinds really noisy and messy? A safe bet is Local News. This is an easy choice if you can\’t pinpoint an exact category for your Zip post. You look further down to see the other categories. Traffic? Hmmm….this isn\’t really traffic per se unless you\’re worried about driving around the 7 Eleven parking lot. We\’re hoping you have better things to do than that but who knows?

In the end, you decide on the Local News channel as the best place to put it. Not a bad choice. First, switch over to the Local News channel and see if there\’s already something there about the 7 Eleven catastrophe. Who knows, you might not be the first or you may have additional info to an existing Zip (which we\’ll discuss next). Nothing there so you look at the bottom of the window where you see \”Add Post\”. Click on that button and the add post window comes up. You\’ll automatically see your picture. In the header window, you add the essentials (under 140 characters). This is what will show as the heading on the main window and it\’s important to give the gist of your post as succinctly as possible. If there\’s more info to post, you can continue but only the first 140 characters will show on any of the main windows. In our 7 Eleven example, a good heading might be something like \”18 Wheeler crashes into 7Eleven on 4th and University Ave. No one hurt!\”. You add that in your post. You can also change the Channel on this main posting page. The system will automatically use the Channel you were previously in as a default but changes can be made on the add post window as well as later if you decide to change it. Only the main author (not re-zips) can change the Channel later on. You hit add post and voila, you\’re officially a local news or local gossip author online! In real time which the best part since we don\’t want to wait till the next day\’s newspaper to find out what\’s happening. We want to know now. You can always go and delete a prior message if you\’re the author.

If you find that the message is already there, you can just add additional info (assuming you have further insight) with a rezip under the main thread. Keep in mind that pictures or video can be added with your original posts or rezips.

Dennis Jarvis writes extensively about local news and local gossip smart phone apps.