Back in March, I tested the waters of subscription tweets by launching a service called “Hill Tweet News.” The idea was to give everyone who follows Congress a central portal to the best tweets by lawmakers.

The policy community wouldn’t have to “follow” every member of Congress on Twitter and read every single tweet. Instead, they could just follow me, and journalist with nearly two decades of experience covering Washington policy and politics, and let me filter the congressional Twitter stream so they only received the most informative and entertaining tweets.

The idea sparked some interest and a few potential subscribers, but no one ever took the step of paying for the service. I was investing a few hours a night to pull it together, but without any revenue to show for it, I decided after about a month of tweeting and promoting the feature by word of mouth, the return on my investment of time wasn’t worth it.

Today, however, I read about a new service called Super Chirp that lets Twitter users charge subscription fees for direct messages sent through Twitter. Users can set their own subscription rates, and Super Chirp takes a cut for handling the business transactions.

I like the idea, so I’m going to make another run at “Hill Tweet News.” If your professional life inside or outside the Beltway revolves around what members of Congress say and do, you need to subscribe. And if you just love politics and policy, you’ll want to subscribe.

Let AirCongress streamline your social media life at “Hill Tweet News.”

Categories: AirCongress, Hill Tweet News

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

Hill Tweet News (March 2, 2009)

March 2, 2009, 10:23pm

AirCongress today began tracking the best “tweets” that members of Congress post to Twitter, a mini-blog service that limits posts to 140 characters. Some of the AirCongress posts will be word-for-word “retweets” of what the lawmakers wrote (the abbreviation for a retweet is RT); others will summarize the content of one or more tweets on the same subject.

This new feature is called “Hill Tweet News,” or HTN for short.

As part of the service, each day at AirCongress.com I will post a sample of the latest tweets from @AirCongress and a button so readers can subscribe to @AirCongress in order to access the full version of HTN via Twitter.

Here are the samples from today’s first edition of the new weekday feature:

@askgeorge is dining with Obama on Wednesday and soliciting questions. Topics — economy, health care, education.

RT @TomCoburn Was just shut out from offering amendments on the Floor to the omnibus.

RT No. 1 pork project for today is $951,500 for Sustainable Las Vegas. See @SenJohnMcCain for the other nine.

Click the button below to subscribe to “Hill Tweet News” and get access to the other news and information available through @AirCongress, including links to the YouTube channels for members of Congress.

It’s free for the first week, and after that, the introductory rate is only $3 a month. But subscribe now before the fee increases!





Categories: AirCongress, Arizona, California, Oklahoma, Health, Tom Coburn, Sen. John McCain, Budget, Education, Economy, George Miller, Hill Tweet News

The Palin Teleprompter Myth

September 4, 2008, 7:13pm

ST. PAUL — Word on the cable networks this morning is that Republican vice-presidential nominee Sarah Palin is a superstar because she delivered her rousing speech at the convention here last night despite a broken teleprompter.

MSNBC reported that tidbit. So did Fox News, with an aide to GOP presidential candidate John McCain talking about the teleprompter woes. Now the blogs are running with the story.

Don’t believe the myth. I watched the speech from the area to the left and behind the stage in the Xcel Center and had a perfect view of the teleprompter. It worked fine. I have the footage to prove it.

At this point, you may be wondering why I videotaped the teleprompter, so here’s my answer: Palin’s speech seemed rushed. She was missing what I thought would have been key applause lines. But then I realized it wasn’t entirely her fault; the teleprompter was rushing Palin through the speech.

I decided to get a clip of the teleprompter in action. At the time, I just thought it would be a colorful item worth blogging. I didn’t think I would need it to debunk a convention myth. But with the networks, the blogs and even the McCain campaign spreading the rumor that the teleprompter wasn’t working, AirCongress can set the record straight.

Watch the teleprompter, the one that was directly in front of the stage, and listen to Palin speaking. The rolling text and her speech are in sync. The teleprompter also stops rolling when the applause begins, and it resumes when Palin starts speaking. That was true throughout the speech.

At least one blog reported that Palin deviated significantly from the prepared speech because the teleprompter broke. That’s also not true. She did ad lib one of her best lines of the night — the one about the only difference between hockey moms and pit bulls being lipstick –but she pretty much read the rest of the speech as it appeared on the teleprompter.

So there you have it. There’s no need to wait for the Internet rumor-buster Snopes.com to get on the case. You heard it at AirCongress first.

Categories: AirCongress, Republican Convention

To hear House Minority Leader John Boehner tell it, raising taxes is what Democrats do best.

The Freedom Project, the Ohio Republican’s political action committee, has released a video that takes Democrats to task for the tax hikes they approved in the federal budget plan last month.

Categories: AirCongress

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