Introducing Hill Tweet News
March 3, 2009, 1:00am
UPDATE: I have moved the “Hill Tweet News” feature to Super Chirp, a service that lets Twitter users charge fees for direct messages sent through Twitter. To get Capitol Hill’s inside scoop from Twitter, please subscribe. “Hill Tweet News” is the best and quickest way to learn who sniped at whom, and why; what lawmakers did and said in committee, on the floor, on the news shows and elsewhere; and what articles, shows, Internet videos and more grabbed their attention.
The new media world is all about experimentation. Entrepreneurs are constantly testing ways of delivering information and making money to support their services. I haven’t used AirCongress as a testbed for a while, but Twitter has inspired me to launch a new media experiment.
I have had an AirCongress account on Twitter for a while now but only recently began using it. I realized that Twitter is a great venue not only for promoting blog entries on AirCongress but also for expanding the type of news information the site offers.
My first experiment was serial tweeting. Over two days, I posted to my account tweets that included the names, party identifications, states (plus districts for House members) and links to the channels of every lawmaker I could find who is currently using YouTube. Here are two samples from my Twitter profile:
GEORGIA: Republican Sen. Johnny Isakson is at www.youtube.com/Sena…
MINNESOTA: Rep. Keith Ellison (D-5th District) is at www.youtube.com/RepK…
The end result is a state-by-state list of every member of Congress currently on YouTube.
I also began “following” every member of Congress who uses Twitter. My initial goal was to more easily find their new audio and video clips to post on AirCongress. But when I realized that few tweets provide such links and that many other tweets have useful information, I decided to create a new feature on AirCongress.
It’s called “Hill Tweet News,” and I started it today.
Here’s how it will work: Each day I will read the tweets of lawmakers I follow on Twitter. I will then put my 18 years of editorial experience in covering Congress to use by picking the most insightful, informative, creative and even amusing tweets to highlight. That means anyone who follows @AirCongress will have a one-stop shop for getting a quick read on what lawmakers are saying on Twitter.
Now comes the business experiment. I will be tweeting daily, and often, so I have decided to charge for the service. Any member of Congress who wants to follow me can do so for free. But after a free, one-week test run, everyone else will have to pay a small subscription of $3 a month, or $36 a year, to subscribe. For that fee, you will get thousands of tweets, plus links to the latest blog posts at AirCongress.com.
I hope to create more features if this experiment is successful, so I encourage subscribers to share your ideas with me. Tell me what you think of this new service, and tell me how @AirCongress can add value for you.
Categories: AirCongress, Producer's Picks, Hill Tweet News
Subscribe to RSS
March 3rd, 2009 at 2:04 pm
[…] AT AIRCONGRESS, introducing Hill Tweet News. […]
March 12th, 2009 at 7:28 pm
[…] You can take a free test run of @AirCongress for a week. After that, you can subscribe for just $3 a month, or $36 a year. For that small fee, you will get thousands of tweets, plus access to the list of YouTube channels.[From AirCongress » Blog Archive » Introducing Hill Tweet News] […]
March 13th, 2009 at 1:35 pm
[…] Monetizing Tweets: For those who Twitter, there are frequently value judgments made on individuals who incessantly tweet marketing messages or nonsensical drivel; beyond a certain threshold one decides to simply unsubscribe. Yet the other end of the value spectrum has just gotten more interesting: Would you pay a monthly fee to receive tweets from a timely, or funny, or insightful individual? @AirCongress, “the online voice of Capitol Hill,” is putting this to the test by charging $3 a month to view its Twitter stream of inside-the-beltway news and gossip. While problems exist with the business model (retweets?), it poses the question, “Is the daily smile I get from @micah worth ten cents a day?” Readers should be aware that @rockyradar will remain a free resource right up to the day we think we can churn some butter from this cream. […]