Hear / Me / Say / This

Hear Me Say This received an honorable mention award in the recent Apps for America contest. This is a great honor that will help propel our fledgling service out of private beta.

The Apps for America contest was sponsored by Sunlught Labs and included over 40 entries from developers and teams from around the country. Only 16 entries were selected for recognition by the panel of judges.

Stay tuned for more exciting announcements from Hear Me Say This.

Get ready to leave a message for the people that represent you in Congress!

Once you record a message using Hear Me Say This, its easy to share it with as many people as you like in your social networks.

Because we send your message to you (and to those that represent you in Congress) as a Twitter @Reply, you have complete control over how it is shared.

Share your message with Twitter followers:

When you receive your @Reply from Hear Me Say This with the link to your recording, simply retweet it. All of your Twitter followers will get to hear your message (and possibly retweet it again) helping ensure that your message gets spread far and wide.

Post your message to your blog:

If you’re using WordPress for your blog (and you should ;-)), then you can use the excellent Twitter for WordPress plugin - it’s what we use to display the latest recorded messages in the right-hand sidebar. After you retweet your recording, it will show up on your WordPress blog. How cool is that!

Share your message with Facebook friends:

With the Twitter application for Facebook, its easy to share your message with all of your Facebook friends. After you retweet your recording, it will automatically update your Facebook profile with a link to your recorded message. Gear!

As mentioned in the previous post, we’re working on expanding our integration with additional social networks, which will make sharing your messages even easier.

One of the driving philosophies behind Hear Me Say This is that it should be easy to send a message to the people that represent you in Congress using your own voice.

Our application lets you harness the power of Twitter, using an ordinary telephone, to send your message to the people that represent you from anywhere, at any time that is convenient to you.

But if one thing is certain about modern telecommunications technology, telephones are becoming increasingly less ordinary - in fact, they’re downright extraordinary!

That’s why we’re working on new functionality that will let users record messages using SIP phones (like Gizmo), VoIP services (like Free World Dialup) and Skype. This new functionality will be deployed in the next few weeks, to make it even easier to record your message for your representatives.

We’re also working on integrating with another microblogging service - Identi.ca. Twitter is definitely the big kid on the microblogging block right now, but change is inevitable. We’re hopeful that more members of Congress and other public officials will begin using Identi.ca and other services to communicate and interact with their constituents.

Give voice to your message and make sure the people that represent you in Congress hear what you have to say!

Stay tuned for more exciting things to come from Hear Me Say This.

Here is a great article from the Cincinnati Enquirer that describes the enthusiasm with which many in Congress are now embracing Twitter as a way to communicate with their constituents:

“As the craze sweeps the country, more lawmakers have jumped on the bandwagon. According to TweetCongress.org, which tracks members of Congress who tweet and encourages those who don’t to start, 115 members of Congress use Twitter, including 78 Republicans and 37 Democrats.”

Hear Me Say This was designed to leverage this growing enthusiasm by empowering constituents to use Twitter to send a message to their representatives in Congress. As more and more members of Congress begin to use Twitter, services like Hear Me Say This will provide greater and greater opportunities for people to send a message to them.

Even if your representatives aren’t “Tweeters” just yet, you can still send a message that they can listen to. Hear Me Say This inserts a #hashtag into recorded messages for members of Congress without a Twitter account. This means that your message can quickly be found using Twitter’s powerful search feature.

Got something on your mind? Got a cost saving idea, or a position on a particular bill? Want to send a message to Congress in your own voice?

Request an initiation code to get started using Hear Me Say This.

Hear Me Say This is now live!

This service was built for people that want to communicate with their representatives in Congress using their own voice. We let you record a message using an ordinary telephone, and send your message to the people that represent your zip code in the U.S. House and Senate using the power of Twitter.

This means you can record a message from anywhere, any time you like, when an important issue or event catches your interest.

By using Hear Me Say This you can share your message not only with Members of Congress, but with the whole world. You can retweet your recorded message, post it to your blog, share it with friends on Facebook - whatever you like

To get started, check out the frequently asked questions section and then request an invitation code. With your invitation code in hand, you will be able to register and record your message for your representatives in Congress.

There’s never been a better way to get your message, in your voice, directly to the people that represent you in Congress.