US: RedEye's new Facebook app allows readers to participate in daily feature

Posted by Carolyn Lo on April 23, 2008 at 10:35 AM

On Monday, RedEye, the Chicago Tribune's free communter daily tabloid, launched a Facebook application that gave readers an opportunity to be one of the five in "Five on Five," the daily mock sports quiz.

The quiz features five regular RedEye writers or fictional characters, such as Bag Boy, who wears a shopping bag over his head. They irreverently respond to five sports-themed questions.

Readers can give their own responses on the Facebook page, which will be voted on by other Facebook users. The winner receives a chance to appear in the paper as one of the five.

On Monday, the question on Facebook was: "Danica Patrick winning a race against men is like ... ," which received the response "... Martina Navratilova winning a tennis tournament against women," from RedEye columnist Jimmy Greenfield. The top-scoring reader entry came Thursday afternoon from Jonathan Ozeran: "...is like Hillary winning...oh, never mind."

Many newspapers are turning to social networking sites like Facebook to gain more readers and to receive more reader participation.

Frequent "Five on Five" contributor Bag Boy said, "Facebook is for delusional people with too much time on their hands. That's why I'm confident all Chicago sports fans will join me on it."

Source: Editor & Publisher