We just wrapped up another amazing #Blogchat on Twitter. If you aren’t familiar with #Blogchat, it’s the largest chat on Twitter, and when it gets rolling starting at 8pm Central, there will be over a tweet left every second. So while there is a TON of great info, it’s impossible to keep up with everything.
And a lot of people won’t even try, and up till a few weeks ago, they would wait till 9pm Central when I would post a transcript for #Blogchat that I had created with a free site called WTHashtag. But there were some changes to Twitter’s Terms of Service, and apparently WTHashtag.com is down now.
But, I know there are some services that can still create transcripts of Twitter chats, although most of them have difficulty catching all the tweets, and if they do, there’s no organization other than to show them in a stream as they happened.
So there is a HUGE demand for transcripts and transcripts that can easily be organized and searchable. Because let’s face it, if you are trying to sort through 5,000 #Blogchat tweets, you need a way to organize the information and track the conversations as they happened.
I think if a company came up with a way to create a killer Twitter chat transcript tool, that they could totally sell transcripts. I sent the tweet out tonight asking if people would pay say $3 for a great transcripts, and dozens of people said they would. I didn’t see anyone say they wouldn’t. When you think that in #Blogchat alone there are 1,000 or so active participants in a good week, and likely at least that many lurkers, you are looking at least a couple of thousand potential customers. And I could even see where a company could sign an agreement with chats to become the ‘official’ transcript for that chat. If a great product/transcript was available, it could quickly corner the market and easily generate several thousand dollars a week in sales.
What the transcript would need is:
- Be searchable. By keyword, Twitter user, etc.
- Be portable so I could use it on my iPad, or Kindle, whatever. Maybe PDF form or something else.
- Have a ‘conversation view’ or something similar where I could chose to have the tweets organized by conversations. It is almost impossible to track conversations when tweets are spaced out in a convo every 5 mins, and there’s 300 new tweets a minute.
Those are some ideas. If someone was going to charge you say $5 for the PERFECT #Blogchat transcript, what would it have to have in order for you to buy it? What’s missing?
And to clarify, I am NOT looking to sell #Blogchat transcripts. I have no idea how to even create them. I am trying to get a discussion started to show companies that there is potential to this idea. Do you think there is?
UPDATE: Great discussion in the comments, but I think Fred may have come up with the perfect solution – “Hey Mack. I think your idea is in the right direction, but as several (like Shannon Whitley @swhitley, Rick Stilwell @RickCaffeinated and Debra Ellis @Debra_Ellis) pointed out, there are some potential legal and “do I want to contribute to a discussion that somebody else monetizes” issues that need to be overcome (ironically, you don’t own your own tweets – twitter does).
Personally, I’d look to solve this problem from a slightly different angle – rather than sell chat transcripts, I’d look to develop an independent app for “personal use only, running on my own personal device” that provided the type of functions you listed for any chat/search/etc.
Think of it as a “twitter-mining” tool. That, to me, would have significant value and possibly avoid the personal and legal pitfalls of an entity trying to sell Twitter content.”
PDFs are the most portable and user friendly but because not everyone uses Acrobat to view them, they’re not always searchable.
An Excel format would make the transcript easily searchable and could also be reorganized but, lets face it, requiring someone to have Excel would be a bit much for the masses.
A conversation view would be nice.
Would people be interested in a transcript displaying tweets from the host and guest?
@kristofcreative I think people want all the tweets, and I think searchable and conversation view or a way to track are musts for the transcripts to be worth paying for. All the transcripts I have seen list all the tweets at best, but with thousands of tweets in a #Blogchats, isn’t extremely difficult to track conversations and the back and forth.
Hashtracking has tried to do this. I blogged about it quite some time ago, and I saw some flaws in the pricing structure. I know they decided to revamp it and I’m not sure what the changes are that they are making. I think your proposal of $3 is MUCH more reasonable and people would pay that. They wanted to charge around $175. YIKES!
Rachel Kay
@rachelakay
this is a cool idea. I would want to see something web based though – so I’m thinking some sort of indexing/database. Hmm….seems like something wordpress could almost do. Twitter spits out a API/RSS (and has put some limits in place which is affecting lots of twitter apps) so while doable, the linchpin is twitter. But the more I’m thinking about – wow, this sounds completely doable and easily doable – if you can get the content from twitter. I am wondering about how to thread convos though. Interesting idea, really. Although I already have 2 big projects I need to finish up but I think this is something that anyone who has worked with APIs could do (even me).
@rachelakay Thanks Rachel. I think people would pay a bit more if the transcript was gorgeous and made all the information easily accessible.
@MackCollier My first thought was something hands-free where the transcripts could be created automatically and emailed to people. But the features you’re talking about seem like some sort of web based service would work better where people could define what they wanted and how they wanted it and then download/export/save the final transcript in a format they prefer.
@kristofcreative I like the idea of highlighting the host & guest (Tweetchat does this), but I agree with Mack that most people would want tweets from all of the users.
@MackCollier I really like the conversation idea, although that’d be really tough to do with as many people as you have in each “breakout” conversation. I think it would need to be web-based … I would want easy ways to follow new people as I was going through the discussion.
@MackCollier BTW, this is first time I’ve seen Livefyre and I really dig seeing the comments load instantly instead of refresh.
@kristofcreative Thanks, yes I am digging Livefyre, they have excellent service and a new version with improvements is supposedly due out soon! You can add it as a plugin from your WordPress dashboard.
@mwhaling @kristofcreative I agree Mike, it seems the conversation stuff would be harder to do, but if you want to make a version worth paying for, need to give people the options they want. If someone comes out and tries to charge for a transcript it had better smoke anything that can be done for free.
Mack, I think it is a great idea. I love participating in #blogchat but I often work Sunday until 7 or 8pm PST. I would definitely be willing to pay $3. My husband Robert has the resources to accomplish this so I will talk to him tonight and see what he says. Miriam
I think that a service like that would be a freemium candidate. For example, with a free account to this “new service” you’d get only the first 200 tweets of any blogchat (random number thrown in), while with a 9$ / month account you’d get all of them, with more tiers coming with more features (I am sure you’d have no problems in finding new services to add to justify a superior tier).You could probably also work a la Mailchimp and offer a pay-per-view one-time fee, with a 3-5$ pricetag per transcript.I can see both ways working along each other no problem.
@maidoesimple Yes that is a possibility as well. Maybe the free version just has the tweets, if you want more advanced features like search and conversation tracker, you have to pay. And I could also see offering transcripts for say $10 each, or if you want 3 months worth, the price falls to $6 each.
Mack, this is a really good idea. Every time I curate the “Takeaway Tweets” from #CampusChat, I am blown away by all the valuable, insightful content shared by the experts who participate. It, like #blogchat content, is worth way more than $3, but starting with $3 is palatiable,
@collegevisit Yes I think that’s one of the challenges in organizing the Twitter chats in that there is a lot of value that’s lost simply because we can’t remember who said what, and can’t easily track the flow of the conversation. There is SO much that falls through the cracks, and that’s why I think a lot of people would be willing to pay at least a few dollars to have a Smartitude Organizer, or transcript 😉
I created a basic transcript generator for ChatTagged (http://chattagged.com/transcript.aspx?tag=blogchat). I’d love to develop it further, but I’m concerned about slamming into the Twitter API Terms.
All of these ideas are fantastic, but would it be considered “reselling content?”
You cannot, “…sell, rent, lease, sublicense, redistribute, or syndicate access to the Twitter API or Twitter Content to any third party without prior written approval from Twitter.”
That’s a very slick little interface you created. Not sure how feasible it would be to show tweets like that for high volume chats like blogchat.
The key point to that TOS is “without prior written approval” – which many apps have. @swhitley
@swhitley Hmmmmm….good point Shannon on the ‘reselling’ content, hadn’t thought of that.
@MackCollier @rachelakay I agree Mack, but at the time they wanted to charge $175 for a single transcript. That definitely doesn’t make sense. I’m excited to see where they’ve come though and I think the idea is sound.
@kristofcreative Thanks. Yes, and the fee isn’t really for the content anyway. The price would cover the cost of technology to format and display the content. (Could I sell that to Twitter’s attorneys?)
Hi Mack,
Many of the people who participate in blogchat are consultants who make a living from their knowledge. Every week they log into Twitter and freely share information with others. Since Twitter is a microblogging site, turning their tweets into “a huge social media money making opportunity” is akin to selling information that was mined from their blogs.
Like many things in this world, what can be done isn’t always what should be done. Since the copyright laws are behind the technology and it can be repackaged as selling the “technology” instead of the content, one could do it. But at what price? How many of your loyal participants will stop sharing once their tweets are being compiled and sold? Will the candor be the same? Or, will people hold back on their best ideas because they don’t want to contribute to the profit machine without receiving compensation?
As a direct marketer and social media advocate, I’m all for combining the two into a profitable enterprise when ownership of the content is clearly defined. But, when a community comes together to share and help each other grow, turning the conversations into a profit center just feels wrong.
@Debra_Ellis Hi Debra – Your point about mining blog content and content on Twitter is interesting. Another perspective about transcripts is that anyone can do it themselves for free. I do believe WTHashtag even offered a software option for people to use on their own server. But if people don’t want to do that or simply don’t have the time, they could choose to pay someone else to do it for them. In which case, what they’re paying for is not the content but the service — time the other person took to compile the information.
@kristofcreative Compiling information for easy consumption isn’t new. Books have had summarized versions available forever. The same argument can be made that people are paying for the service instead of the content, but there is a difference – the original authors receive a residual for the use of their work. And, if the content isn’t the objective, why do people need the service?
@Debra_Ellis I’m looking at it from a standpoint where I often pay people to research topics for me — and part of that is compiling information from blogs, social networks, etc. But even though the objective is that I want to read the content, I’m not paying them for the content because it’s not theirs to sell. I pay them for the time to gather it for me.
I think the conversation about paying for content v paying for service and usage could be endless 😉
@kristofcreative Agreed! Instead of content vs service, maybe the question is “are people willing to freely share quality content if they know it is going to be leveraged for someone else’s profit?” I’m one that will walk away from chats when transcripts start being sold.
@Debra_Ellis Hmmmm….that’s an interesting viewpoint and a different one from what I was thinking. I am looking at this as if money was involved, that a company could step forward to offer a BETTER solution to transcripts that was worth paying for. Let’s be honest, all you can really hope for now from the few limited transcript options is a stream of tweets. That works for a chat that has 200 tweets, but when you look at one with 5,000 like #Blogchat, it’s not as effective.
I know that many #Blogchat participants WANT the transcripts because they want to be able to take the tweets and study them later and learn from them. I think if there was a paid option that it would help them even more if there were advanced features like search and conversation tracker.
Would some people be upset if money was asked for? Sure, as soon as you try to monetize anything even remotely associated with social media, some people are going to be upset.
But I think in general that a paid transcript option, if priced correctly with features that helped learning take place, would benefit the community as a whole.
@MackCollier There is a demand no doubt and I have no issue with people monetizing social media. Using blogchat as an example, I think that it is terrific that you are able to generate revenue from the live events. You should be compensated for the time and effort that you put into the chat.
Selling the transcripts is different. The information shared is creative content that belongs to the people who create the tweet. If selling transcripts is acceptable, why stop there? Why not create an e-book of the best blogchat tips? Or, compile a selection of the funniest tweets from blogchat for a coffee table book? The question is who has the right to sell tweet that originated from others? Does tweeting require you to give up all rights to the content you created?
For me, this isn’t a question of whether social media should be monetized or not. I think it should generate an income for the people creating content and building communities. It is a question of who owns the content that is created and has the right to monetize it in any form.
@Debra_Ellis Hmmmmm…..that’s a fair point Debra about who owns your content. I guess I see the other side as well, as long as money isn’t involved, then we will all have to deal with an inferior transcript and we won’t really be able to unlock the full value of the chats. So no one ‘sells’ your content, but we also don’t get the full value from the chat that we could.
Is that a fair trade? I think that’s something that everyone has to decide for themselves.
Hi there #blogchat king:)
I have been feeling like chats are the great ocean of unrealized opportunity in Twitter. It seems like a LOT of people are starting chats these days, but they’re bunching up at the same time, which means the loyalty to each chat is getting tested and thinned out. To your point, this may make transcripts all the more attractive.
The problem, though, is who would get the sales money? And what if someone links to a blog post? Would you in essence be selling their intellectual property? I’m sure someone would jump up and say that 🙂
Very interesting idea!
Dis-like. Adding a pay model on top of something essentially “free” seems to be a bad karma kind of move. I’m actually thinking of providence and serendipity – if something jumps out at me over the course of #blogchat or any of the others, my own tweets will capture some of that as RTs or @ replies. I can also search for my own keywords just using the service as provided. “Free transcripts” are fine for giving the flow perhaps, but selling something that’s more than that might be overkill.
And on principle, not sure I’d want to be a part – what I appreciate most is following the Smart Kids who freely give of themselves to better the whole.
@margieclayman It looks like we have two issues here that are working against each other:
1 – We can’t really expect anyone to come up with a transcript that has all the features we want for free. There’s just too much work involved and it will be tough to find anyone that wants to invest the time and money into creating the more robust transcript, without selling it.
BUT….
2 – If someone starts selling that transcript, then a lot of people are going to be upset, and rightly so.
It seems like both sides want something that the other side can’t give.
@RickCaffeinated Rick if we were talking about trying to monetize what is already happening for free, I would agree.
What I am talking about is how we need a better and more robust transcript. There is SO much knowledge and learning that’s being lost in the chats because it’s all but impossible to mine 5,000 or so tweets and find the conversations, the relevant back and forth, etc. If we had a transcript that could help us do that, then it would be more valuable to the community, and we would all learn more.
The problem is, it’s doubtful that anyone can provide that solution for free. They would have to invest time and resources to create that solution, and would expect to be compensated for their time and effort.
But on the flipside, a lot of people like you wouldn’t like the idea of anyone trying to monetize this.
So it seems we are stuck with an inferior transcript, because both sides want something that the other side isn’t willing to give up. And for the record, I can see both sides of this. Hopefully there is an alternative that could work, but not sure what it is.
@MackCollier I think I’m coming from a more minimalist point of view. I relate to the chats almost like sitting through a sermon, or a conference speaker. The presenter might have five or six really good points, but if I can grab on to just one and make it work, I’ll be fulfilled. So it’s not about getting all that I can like that – thinking fully selfishly, I guess – but it’s about making sure something of value and meaning sticks in the first place.
And then, instead of a fully accessible transcript, a list of pertinent “here’s what we learned today” blogposts would fill that void better for me.
Mack, let’s not get fixated on a $3 per transcript model or a subscription model. There are other ways to monetize a high-end transcript service. Targeted advertising comes to mind — how often do we share names of products and services that we like during a chat? How often do we promote books? I think there is a strong case for a service provider to create a transcript tool and incorporate a revenue model that is advertising based. Is anyone else’s imagination running wild possibilities? Talk about a target audience….we’re there!
@collegevisit Kelly do you mean like adding advertising to the transcript? I think some people would complain about that as well.
And BTW, I like that you are thinking this through, but I think one of the considerations is that if ANY money is being made off a transcript, some part of the community is going to complain. That’s just a given. Not saying they won’t have a reason to complain, but they will.
Hey Mack. I think your idea is in the right direction, but as several (like Shannon Whitley @swhitley, Rick Stilwell @RickCaffeinated and Debra Ellis @Debra_Ellis) pointed out, there are some potential legal and “do I want to contribute to a discussion that somebody else monetizes” issues that need to be overcome (ironically, you don’t own your own tweets – twitter does).
Personally, I’d look to solve this problem from a slightly different angle – rather than sell chat transcripts, I’d look to develop an independent app for “personal use only, running on my own personal device” that provided the type of functions you listed for any chat/search/etc.
Think of it as a “twitter-mining” tool. That, to me, would have significant value and possibly avoid the personal and legal pitfalls of an entity trying to sell Twitter content.
Just a thought to your excellent question. – Fred
@RickCaffeinated Rick I think a lot of those ‘here’s what we learned’ blog posts aren’t being written because a lot of people are simply overwhelmed with the sheer volume of the tweets, and how disorganized they are.
Which is why I think a more robust transcript would create MORE value and more learning for everyone. Because we’d all have better access to the full value of the chats.
@fredmcclimans @RickCaffeinated Fred, that might work. An app you buy that lets you create your own transcripts.
Love it. That might be the solution we need!
@fredmcclimans @RickCaffeinated Great idea. Only, my understanding is that Twitter isn’t approving any new apps so it would need to be created by an existing service.
@kristofcreative @RickCaffeinated How you capture the chat info is a good point. But there are plenty of existing services, and I would not rule out a mechanism that relied upon a non-API solution (thinking along the lines of personally being able to use the Twitter front end to do a search/capture/import… just musing here).
@MackCollier Yes, in lieu of a click & pay or a paid subscription model, advertising is another idea to consider. Suppose transcripts were delivered via an email newsletter that included ads plus a link to the full web pate with search/organizational tools? There’s so much value-add to be had and a variety of delivery options. I use Keepstream as a curation tool for my own chats and have even curated the tweets from guests on various chats (such as guykawasaki ) just to have the collection to review when I had time (I also shared the collected tweets with the chat hosts). But, my chats don’t have as many tweets as yours, so a tool to automate curation along with other features would be lovely. Ads would not bother me. 🙂
@fredmcclimans Interesting. I believe that even if it was something like a browser based plugin that extends Twitter’s search capabilities, it would still need to hook into the API. I’m not a plugin developer so I’m not 100% but we’re talking about accessing and manipulating the results.
There is an app called http://rowfeeder.com that ports the tweets to a spreadsheet (Google or Microsoft). Then you can do all kinds of interesting things with them.
Hi @MackCollier @fredmcclimans @RickCaffeinated @Debra_Ellis Well, if you’re monetizing other folks contributions, directly, then there’s a copyright issue if you’re selling the content as your own. I woudn’t advise selling transcripts of content. The problem of selling Twitter chat transcripts is that it becomes a Publishign rights problem. I would recommend that folks monetize their audiences. This is what HuffingtonPost has done much better than the New York Times with their commenting system and advertising system. If we treat the chat as a real-time commenting system, the content ideally should be freely available, but those hosting the chat and the transcripts should freely monetize their audiences. Sponsorships, advertising, and even other direct marketing appears to be effective. Does this help?
@MackCollier @fredmcclimans @RickCaffeinated At http://stanzr.com we are helping Twitter chat moderators monetize their audiences via transcripts that drive traffic and landing pages that foster direct marketing and sponsorship opportunities. It’s my view that you don’t need to nurture and build your audience. That’s the asset that many brands would kill to get in front of.
@twchat RowFeeder only allows for non-display of Tweet data. You can’t resyndicate or republish rowfeeder content as your own or in an application. RowFeeder is a great tool for analysis, but for publishing, I wouldn’t be able to see how one wouldn’t run afoul of Twitter TOS.
I don’t even think that it is twitter approving new apps. They are controlling how many times their API can be called to. @kristofcreative @fredmcclimans @RickCaffeinated
@kristofcreative @fredmcclimans @RickCaffeinated Or a new platform that catered to the need to publish content, but broadcast it anywhere it needed to be.
Why can’t someone come with a product that is free to use? Opensource, anyone? (which does have some inherent costs, but … ) I do agree there are issues with reselling free content – perhaps if the fee supported the hosting and development of the product it would be ok? Definitely would need a TOS of some sort; though I still think Twitter is going to be the make or break spot. If Twitter’s TOS prevents this sort of thing and the API issue shuts it down, no need to discuss legal issues, copyright, etc. IMHO. 😉 @MackCollier @margieclayman
@MackCollier
Why can’t someone come up with a product that is free to use? Opensource, anyone? (which does have some inherent costs, but … ) I do agree there are issues with reselling free content – perhaps if the fee supported the hosting and development of the product it would be ok? Definitely would need a TOS of some sort; though I still think Twitter is going to be the make or break spot. If Twitter’s TOS prevents this sort of thing and the API issue shuts it down, no need to discuss legal issues, copyright, etc. IMHO. 😉 MackCollier. margieclayman.
@margieclayman