Twitter itself is just a tool, and while I’ll check it fairly regularly, it’s the ability to send stuff elsewhere that makes it useful, not the site itself. I’d also have recent updates display in the sidebar of my homepage if I’d got around to updating it recently. Twitter is more useful than a Status update. Alternatively, you can get your status updates ported to your twitter, but I can’t see the point, the Twitter interface is easier to update.

I’m feeling maybe twitter is a bit out of my area of interest though – I really can’t see the point to it…I think the status function on facebook is much better. But a matter of personal choice I suppose…:@)

My target “audience” is distinctly not activists or even members, mostly it’s non-politically aware types. But my tweets can vary from “I’m stuck in a train” through to “good meeting with local Cllr/MP/PPC about X”, and they do get read, and sometimes commented on as well.

Biggest use for a politician I’d say would be to embed them as a feed on the sidebar of their main site and also improt them to Facebook as Status updates—recent activity, updated from anywhere very quickly and easily. There are other things that can be done, if we figure out how to do that effectively we’ll do that too. If it can’t be done effectively, then, well, it’s fun trying.

Tony? I refer you to the words of the great Douglas Adams on new technologies and age.

The bigger issue is that when you put a political message in front of people there is a lack of engagement – I don’t belive that the answer to this is just to find a a more sophisticated technological way of putting information in front of people.

There are some serious points here. One of the shocking problems about the way we are going is the degree to which everything is more and more instant. And the more instant it gets the more trivial it gets.

Another serious point is that just because something exists does not mean it is good, useful or should be used. For instance I use email because it is useful (though it has it’s downsides such as the explosion of unnecessary communication it has caused, and the decline in written politeness and increasing familiarity in serious formal communication which is a thoroughly bad thing).

Twittering seems to me to have few real benefits and none at all in a political context.

(I suppose it’s a sign of the times that quoting a line from the greatest English poet
since Shakespeare is thought to be “puerile posturing”!)

Oh wad some pow’r the giftie gie us…

Tony Greaves

The earthquake that hit recently? Nearly took down the BBC website, they had a massive traffic spike. The age of a leaflet through every door being the best and only way to campaign is coming to an end, now it’s just another bit of junkmail.

We need to embrace the change that modern communications gives us, and that means experimenting with different methods. Facebook, Twitter, blogs, forums, etc?

All different methods of communication. It used to be people joined the party because a local Cllr or MP helped them and persuaded them to get involved. I joined the party because my MP commented on my blog and asked me to a meeting.

Plus ca change. Twitter is just another type of leafletting, aimed at a different audience. What, exactly, is your problem with us trying new methods anyway? You use half of them.

Twitter is just another communication method. You can use it for good, you can use it for campaigning or you can use it for prattle, and the truth is most of the time, you use it for a mix of all them.

Alliteration, on the other hand – that’s where it’s at.

And gathering swallows twitter in the skies…

The sooner you all fly away and leave the world to serious people the better.

Tony Greaves

I like it more and more now active people are using it. Porting it into Facebook using Sync is also useful, although it does mean everything starts as if there’s an “is”…

Brian, obvious overlooked him!

I should have mentioned Ryan is doing all sorts of amazing clever stuff with Twitter as well as just twittering.