Tackable...The New Frontier

Tackable may first appear to be yet another app in the sea of thousands available on the smart phone market. With closer examination, however, it could become the most widely consumed information source we have ever seen.

Luke Stangel quit his job as a reporter to take on the task of creating this new application. At 28, and after seven years on the beat, Stangel decided it was time to turn his passion for journalism into a new career endeavor; that's when Tackable was born.

The idea behind Tackable is that it is a live media map. It automatically pulls up the information that is closest to the user in a map format that has interactive features as well. If you were to take all the top stories, best promotions and latest breaking news from a paper and pinpoint their locations to an exact address on a map, you get Tackable.

We know that proximity and prominence play a major role in the news that is consumed, and Tackable seems to have great promise because it has information and news that focus primarily in these areas. Stangel stated in an interview that papers are successful if they focus energy in one of two fields, specialized news or local news, and Tackable allows the users to take advantage of information from both of these topics.

Social media also has a role in this application. Because it allows users to post comments in real time with what is happening, other users can easily see on the map what is happening at that exact moment in the world around them, and also what their social network has to say about it.

Tackable allows everyone to become a journalist, but is still focused on quality reporting and journalism. It is an application that integrates social media and the news like never before, and hopefully will have a long future in the industry.

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