Today’s Times reports on the growth of Twitter and Facebook among councillors, noting in particular the work of one Lib Dem councillor/blogger, Daisy Benson:

Daisy Benson, a Liberal Democrat member of Reading Borough Council, used Facebook to encourage young people to take part in a scrutiny review of the standard of private rented housing in the area. “I used it because the issue we were looking at particularly affected students and young people and it’s a good way to reach them.”

Benson set up a Facebook group and listed the consultation questions. The group attracted more than 80 members. Among

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Winding up usage of my old work email address in the last few weeks, after using it for nearly a decade, has given me far more experience than I’ve ever wanted about the idiosyncracies of trying to change your email address on different lists and for different organisations and firms.

(Double black marks to the people running some of the Barack Obama email lists who (a) don’t tell you how to change your address, (b) don’t tell you have to join the list from your new address and (c) don’t reply if you contact them. But then, as you may have heard …

Something fascinating happened yesterday. I was browsing through one of the internet forums I regularly visit when I noticed someone posting that people should go to the Daily Mail poll page on their website and vote yes to the poll that asks “Should gypsies jump the queue on the NHS?” in order to mess with them.

When I got to the page and duly voted “Yes” I was astonished to see that the poll was at 93% Yes and 7% No. The forum I refer to has nowhere near enough people to make a dent in the thousands who vote in …

PR Week has a piece comparing the online strategies of the UK’s three main political parties. With a nod or two towards Obama’s use of social media, the article presents a report card on each party, compiled by their panel of experts.

Each party is examined on its approach, key players, leader and the involvement of MPs and grassroots.

The Conservatives are found to have “attracted the most plaudits so far,” while Labour’s “command and control mentality” is said to be hampering their efforts.

The verdict on the Liberal Democrats is that our “overall understanding of social media is impressive” but that …

June’s edition of Total Politics carries the second part of a two part series from me about how people in politics can get the most out of Facebook.

In the May edition of Total Politics, I went through some of the steps to get started with using Facebook, including getting your privacy settings right and pulling in content from elsewhere. But once you’ve done that, what next?

Facebook groups are a good place to start. You can hunt out groups that cover issues or organisations in your patch and also set up one or more groups to compliment your own …

Nick Clegg gets a lot of questions via Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn, Friend Connect, as well as through his website, NickClegg.com.

He’s just made a new YouTube video with answers to some of the questions he’s received through his social networks:

What does Nick think of compulsory voting? The Lisbon Treaty? Watch and find out:

And as today is Polling Day, Nick signs off with a call to get out and vote, whatever your views on the European Union.

Nick’s done a few of …

So I’m sitting in front of my laptop desperately trying to think of some new way to campaign that will complement shoving pieces of paper through letter boxes and isn’t just having yet another website.

I’m quite convinced, by the way, that only a limited percentage of even the best leaflets get read on their way to the recycling bin – and many local party websites only get visited by activists anyway.

And then my mind goes back to the lecture I attended at City University by the bloke who did Obama’s e-campaigning – and suddenly the brains …

Window posters have a key role to play in many winning Liberal Democrat election campaigns because the more likely people think we are to win, the most likely they are to vote for us. Seeing lots of their neighbours displaying posters helps raise that credibility.

The online equivalent is to change your Facebook profile photo, Twitter avatar, instant messaging picture (and so on, depending on which services you use).

There’s a graphic below you can use. Just save it to your computer and then use it to change your profile picture / avatar / icon. You may have seen it spreading quickly already …

That’s the headline from The Register:

In an unprecedented effort to crack down on self-serving edits, the Wikipedia supreme court has banned contributions from all IP addresses owned or operated by the Church of Scientology and its associates.

Closing out the longest-running court case in Wikiland history, the site’s Arbitration Committee voted 10 to 0 (with one abstention) in favor of the move, which takes effect immediately…

Some have argued that those editing from Scientology IPs may be doing so without instruction from the Church hierarchy. But a former member of Scientology’s Office of Special Affairs – a department officially responsible

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The party’s manifesto for the European elections is also available as an iPhone app. If you have access to an iPhone or iPod touch you can view it. Go to apps store and search for Liberal Democrats. The app is free.

And don’t forget, you can also get the party’s TV broadcasts (PPBs) using our iTunes feed.

From The Register:

A supposedly massive denial of service attack against the British National Party website has been exposed as a gross exaggeration.

The assault, which began on Friday, was described by the party in an email appeal for funds as the “largest cyber attack in recorded history” and comparable only to a 2001 assault against Microsoft. Nick Griffin, leader of the controversial far-right political party, asked the party’s supporters to stump up the £5,000 urgently needed to purchase hardware and servers supposedly needed to keep the site up and running …

A technically knowledgeable person at the hosting firm managing the

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From Dizzy Thinks:

David Boothroyd has had to resign from the “Wikipedia Supreme Court”. David Boothroyd is a Labour councillor in Westminster who comments on a number of right wing blogs including this one. He has an anally retentive insistent on this blog of referring to me by my full name for some reason.

I mentioned this simply because he’s had to resign after admitting to have multiple identities on Wikipedia and spending most of his time editing David Cameron’s page. He also used his multiple identities to get himself elected to the Wikipedia Arbitration Committee it seems.

With more detail in …

votewise.co.uk – the independent website which lists forthcoming by-elections and candidates (and which I blogged about here) – has recently started displaying page view figures on the biography pages for each by-election candidate. The numbers (even allowing for being page views rather than absolute unique visitors) are generally impressive, with a candidate’s page being typically viewed several hundred times.

Given the number of votes it takes to win or lose an election, and the likelihood that a high proportion of those views are from (potential) voters, that’s not a number to be sniffed …

A current Lords parliamentary inquiry is allowing YouTube submissions from members of the public.  The inquiry is on the topic of how people engage with the work of the House of Lords and Parliament more generally.

One such member of the public who has shared her views is, erm, Jo Swinson, in an excellent short video that addresses many of their questions.

You can see the video for yourself here on the Parliamentary YouTube channel, along with many other interesting shorts, including information about the clock that chimes Big Ben.

I’m all for MPs spending money on websites* and, just because you can set something up for free in five minutes, that doesn’t mean an MP can’t sensibly spend a reasonable chunk of money on a website. Good MP websites contain a wealth of content, design and functionality for which it is reasonable to pay something.

But the news that Conservative MP Angela Browning’s spent £9,635 for a pretty basic website plus 30 months hosting/support does look very odd. From what I’ve seen, I can’t see how that price is justified: it is substantially more than a range of …

From the Sunday Mirror:

Social Media Affairs has just released a report looking at the political social media landscape in the UK (with, ahem, myself being one of the four people contributing introductory remarks about politics and social media).

Any report like this has to deal with all sorts of issues of definition and categorisation but there are some striking broad trends they’ve found.

Liberal Democrat councillors are the keenest bloggers

7% of Liberal Democrat councillors are bloggers (a number boosted significantly by the ALDC MyCouncillor system), compared to 2% of Labour councillors and 1% of Conservative councillors.

This keenness to blog also has a significant …

What does it take for a Lib Dem blogger to hit the mainstream media?

You might think racy exclusives and sex scandals would be the way forward. But not Mark Thompson of the Mark Reckons blog – instead he’s chosen to make his mark on the Lib Dem blogging world through the medium of statistical correlation analysis, examining the likelihood of MPs in safe seats being implicated in the expenses furore.

His study, MPs Expenses and safe seats correlation – update, was picked up by (among others) The Guardian’s Polly Toynbee. And now Mark is to be …

Do you need advice on e-campaigning? Or do you have experiences that you’d like to share on e-campaigning?

If so look no further.

The hearts & minds group of the Technology Advisory Board are setting up a mentoring scheme to match people who want to give advice on e-campaigning to people who need advice on how to campaign better.

We already have a number of experienced local campaigners ready – just click here to see more on the forum, follow the instructions there and they’ll get back to you.

Rob Blackie is a former Lib Dem Director of …

Fifty-six Lib Dem PPCs have put their name to an open letter to the Speaker of the House of Commons, Michael Martin:

Dear Mr Speaker, 

As Parliament continues to be dragged down by the allowance system, and its rules, the role of those in public service across the country is being undermined. 

We are Liberal Democrat candidates seeking to be elected to Parliament and yet we find ourselves disappointed, and frustrated, at the way in which this matter is being handled. Every day our residents are telling us loudly that this must stop and this must stop now. 

Three things stand out:

• The resistance

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