C-SPAN DEBUTS ONLINE “CONVENTION HUB” FOR UPCOMING DEMOCRATIC AND REPUBLICAN CONVENTIONS
Washington, DC (August 12, 2008) -- C-SPAN announces today its “Convention Hub,” a unique online addition to the network’s coverage of the upcoming 2008 Democratic and Republican conventions.
Convention Hub, comprised of two websites, is designed to track coverage of the political blogosphere and social media, while making embeddable C-SPAN convention video available for online use.
C-SPAN’s Democratic Convention Hub and Republican Convention Hub are slated to launch at: www.c-span.org/politics later this month, just prior to the start of the two political party conventions.
C-SPAN has engaged New Media Strategies (NMS), an Arlington-based online intelligence and marketing firm, to design proprietary software technology for Convention Hub. C-SPAN will maintain editorial control over each of the websites.
Convention Hub features include:
• Real-time tracking of credentialed state and national political bloggers, aggregated on the websites, to enable users to follow the latest online convention news and analysis;
• Video clips from the network’s convention coverage, embeddable, to facilitate use by political bloggers and other convention watchers;
• Linkable access to the complete C-SPAN Video Library, allowing interested users to fully search all C-SPAN video content;
• Live coverage of C-SPAN television and radio networks;
• Blogger Tips and Online Convention Video Finder tools;
• Real-time feeds from Twitter users using the hash-tags #RNC08 and #DNC08
“For nearly 30 years, C-SPAN has given voice to the opinions of the American public through its televised call-in programs. In 2008, Convention Hub allows C-SPAN to become a central point for the political opinions of the online community,” said Susan Swain, C-SPAN Co-President.
“C-SPAN’s Convention Hub recognizes the importance of the online environment in shaping political news and conversation. Just as C-SPAN is known for direct interaction with viewers through call-ins, NMS will help C-SPAN build direct relationships with bloggers by linking, featuring, and even soliciting their content,” added Pete Snyder, NMS Founder and CEO.
