Stringwire Lets Newsrooms Broadcast and Archive User Videos

By Karen Fratti 

stringwirelogoLast year, NBC Universal bought Stringwire, an app that lets users stream live-video that news organizations can use. Since a beta launch in August, NBC News has used to to document events like rallies and protests in Ferguson and Occupy Hong Kong.

News organizations have been dabbling in UGC for years, but it’s been hard to verify and attribute it. Stringwire solves some of those problems. The app is available on iPhone and Android and “stringers,” upload video as they see fit. The stream of video is consistently monitored for quality and standards. Then:

Multiple stringers can be invited to join a channel and live stream at the same time. The director of a channel can then communicate with Stringers, switch between streams and broadcast the output live to an audience.

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Directors of a channel are alerted when a video is uploaded and then can use it on broadcast. It’s an efficient way to help newsrooms gather and archive UGC. The only bad thing for videographers? There’s still no compensation, just attribution with your Stringer handle. From their terms of service:

Any content you stream to Stringwire is owned by you. However, when you stream, you are granting NBCUniversal and other users and their licensees, affiliates, successors and assigns a perpetual, worldwide, royalty-free, irrevocable, non-exclusive, fully sub-licensable license to:

● Use, distribute, sublicense, reproduce, modify, adapt, publish, translate, publicly perform and publicly display Your User Content;

● Incorporate Your User Content into other works, in whole or in part, in any format or medium or manner now known or later developed, and to make any technical modifications necessary to do so, and use, distribute, sublicense, reproduce, modify, adapt, publish, translate, publicly perform an publicly display those works;

● Sell, license, assign and otherwise transfer your User Content and content created containing your User Content and otherwise exploit any and all rights granted by you under our Terms of Service

Is this where we’re going? Videographers, journalists, and civilians filming and giving content away? While broadcast and cable newsrooms experiment with user generated content, live-streaming, and evolving technology, eventually they’ll have to find a way to compensate and track “stringers.” Unless the social ecosystem surrounding television evolves so much that we’re all sharing, watching, and using video provided by each other. When broadcasts use tweets from viewers, that’s one thing. But it’s a whole other ball game to get people to film breaking news.

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