You've heard of Twitter, right?
Twitter is all the rage among the political class in the U.S.. It's a little less popular here.
Still, politicians and others are fiddling with Twitter. With Twitter, you sign up and then choose some friends, notable, or political journalists (more on that in a sec) and then sit back and read their Twitterfeeds — their thoughts, notes, and updates at Twitter's limit of 140-characters-at-a-time.I'm following NDP Leader Jack Layton on Twitter, for example, and here's his most recent Twitter update:
Hope to see you all on the campaign trail soon – check out all the videos from week one: http://www.ndp.ca/page/4725
And here's the most recent Twitter entry from some guy named pmharper:
Just played the piano and sang a few songs for the journalists covering our tour. Photo at http://tinyurl.com/6hzfzn
The Liberals put out a press release today to remind people that they were on Twitter, too, as well as other social networking tools like Facebook and Flickr.
Now, as I mentioned, Twitter, and its BlackBerry adjunct TwitterBerry, is hotter in the U.S. Than it is here. Part of the reason for that is that Twitter works best when you can use it a lot — when can constantly twitter about things, where you are, how you feel, and so on. For most people the best device for Twittering, as it's called, is your phone. But in the Canada, most cellphone users have plans where calls are cheap but you pay for every text message. In the U.S., cellphone plans that feature bulk rates for text messages are more common. As a result, U.S. Twitter members tend to Twitter more than Canadians do because Twittering is cheaper there.
Now I can see how Facebook, YouTube, and Flickr will become valuable tools for political operatives but I'm still waiting to see if Twitter will be a killer political app here in Canada.
In the meantime, I got this possibly ominous message from Twitter today. (You can set your Twitter preferences to be notified every time someone signs up to follow you):
Hi, davidakin.AntiHarperBias (AntiHarperBias) is now following your updates on Twitter.Check out AntiHarperBias's profile here: http://twitter.com/AntiHarperBias
Hi David,
I am the AntiHarperBias author – saw your Tweet and thought I'd comment.
I think it could definitely be an effective tool for any party or candidate. Ridings with younger/more tech savvy folk would clearly benefit most but you can synch up Twitter to update your Facebook status also and FB has significantly more users in Canada than Twitter itself.
Just this evening since actively adding folks to follow I have been called a spreader of FUD propaganda, mentioned on your blog, received a number of direct messages, had someone note they will mention the Twitter account on their politics podcast and received various other mentions [see Summarize results here: http://search.twitter.com/search?q=AntiHarperBias%5D from across the country.
What, if any, impact I can have over the course of the election will likely be insignificant, but to be able to accomplish even the above results for an hour's worth of my time, I think that is pretty impressive for one website. And if nothing else it reinforces my desire to continue with this through the campaign.
The opportunity to also see a wide range of folks opinions, from candidates to reporters such as yourself to my fellow voters is another huge plus for the system as a whole. All in all I hope Twitter [or whatever replaces it down the road] remains a vital component of future elections.
All the best,
Rob
P.S. Via Twitter I see you are off with the Harper campaign, give them my love 😉
Cheers