So CoverItLive no longer is free

So I was on Cover It Live last night setting up some events for this week's baseball playoffs, and everything was fine. No notifications or anything on their website.

I got on today to make sure everything is ready to go for today's event, and the website is completely different. I couldn't even get in until I agreed to their new terms of service.

Come to find out that CIL will start charging monthly fees. There's a pricing plan, and my account was listed as "1-month pre-trial," but with nothing explaining what that actually means.

I click on "contact us," and there are no phone numbers for anyone at CIL; just an email service.

I finally found a phone number for their parent company -- Demand Media. Called the NY office and learned that the operator's extension is not in service. Called the Austin office, and finally talked to a human being who explained that for existing customers, there will be one month of free coverage, but on July 1, everyone will have to start paying.

The guy I talked to in Austin said they meant to send out email notifications before the changeover, but something came up, and they couldn't get it done. They hope to send them out tonight.

OK, so this was kind of a hybrid of informing and venting. Sorry for that.

 

Wow, that is really interesting. Wondering when they were going to do that. Now have to see what our company will do. Pay CiL or pay someone else like Scribble Live (or whatever it is called) or develop our own (ha ha ha ha).

 

I'm honestly surprised it took this long. I know a lot of places that use it for news and sports. Our problem is that we didn't budget for it, so we don't have any money to throw at it right now.

I do like that the pricing is done on a month-by-month basis, but that's about the only saving grace.

The way they've handled this transition, you'd think they were a newspaper company.

 

Well, that sucks.

If anyone has any open-source (read: freebie) alternatives for live chats that work as well as CIL, post 'em here.

 

I echo earlier sentiments that I'm surprised this took so long. It was only a matter of time. Are we really surprised?

 

Not surprised. Also not happy with the shoddy way it was handled. That kind of an overhaul with no notice and few explainers on their website for what any of this means is all kinds of poor execution.

Then again, I'm just glad they didn't do this in the middle of HS football season. Then we would've really been sunk.

 

Serious question: With Twitter now enabling us to interact with readers at all times of the day, do we really need live chats anymore? Half the time I end up just repeating what I say on Twitter, anyway.

 

Those five people who "tune" into newspaper live coverage will be disappointed.

 

You can use Twitter for live coverage, but not in the same way as CIL. I've followed people who were using Twitter for play-by-play, and it congested the feed so much, I had to unfollow them until the game was over.

 

Stitch: Perhaps where you are. During the state basketball tournament here, room counts top 50, sometimes 100.

Of course the local paper that was using it just cut six newsroom/sports positions, so you know there's no money for this.

 

We get in the thousands.

 

We get in the thousands for certain events. We used cover it live during high school football last fall to pull in tweets from all over the state. Was great.