Tag Archives: twitter

Alex Foster

Conference twittering

By Alex Foster | Fri 12th September 2008 - 11:21 am

Here’s another interesting way of making the technology go a little bit further.

The Twitter user @PartyConference has suggested a hashtag taxonomy to bring together a variety of twitterers in a common purpose.  If you’re twittering from Lib Dem party conference, why not add the text #LibDem08 to your message?

Posted in Conference | 2 Comments
Mark Pack

The future for Twitter ain’t looking so bright

By Mark Pack | Thu 14th August 2008 - 12:24 pm

Twitter has just axed the ability to receive updates by text message (for people outside the US, Canada and India). This radically restricts its appeal and usefulness as this means both you can’t use it as a free news-by-text service anymore but also it reduces the instant interactivity which appealled to many.

More details in my post over at PoliGeeks and on Alex Foster’s blog. As you’ll see from those posts, there are workarounds to continue to get updates via your phone, but they aren’t nearly as convenient or easy to use as the previous texting service.

Posted in News and Online politics | 13 Comments
Mark Pack

What next for social networking?

By Mark Pack | Thu 7th August 2008 - 9:45 am

Predicting which companies and software are going to prosper and which are going to fizzle and disappear is a notoriously unreliable business, but it certainly looks at the moment as if Facebook, Myspace and Bebo are pretty well entrenched as the major social networking sites not only in the UK but also in many other countries, including (perhaps crucially in terms of predicting the future) the US.

Possibly this trio will change slightly in composition, having one of its members replaced or being joined by a fourth or fifth, but at the moment all three seem set pretty …

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Posted in News and Online politics | Also tagged , , and | 9 Comments
Mark Pack

Twitter: a passing fad or a useful campaign opportunity?

By Mark Pack | Thu 17th July 2008 - 7:55 am

Over on PoliGeeks I’ve done a brief posting about some of the latest traffic statistics regarding Twitter. In brief: usage is continuing to grow extremely quickly and Twitter is now (on at least one measure) more widely used in the UK than in the US.

Posted in Online politics | 8 Comments
The Voice

Get local election results news by text message

By The Voice | Wed 30th April 2008 - 4:53 pm

The party’s Chief Executive, Chris Rennard, writes:

The party’s website www.libdems.org.uk will be regularly updated during Thursday night and Friday day time with the latest election results from around the country.

You can also sign up for highlights to be sent direct to your mobile phone by texting

follow resultsservice

to 07624 801 423.

Our results service makes use of Twitter, so if you have not used Twitter before you will receive a confirmation message that you have to respond to. Text messages you send to Twitter are charged at your normal cost. Updates we send you are free of charge.

Posted in News | Also tagged | Leave a comment
Alex Foster

Twitter News

By Alex Foster | Thu 24th April 2008 - 10:15 am

Blogger Chick Yog believed that the Lib Dems are staffed by robots.

This proved not to be the case.

Although some believe our fearsome leafleting capability is due to an army of robotic leafleters, the sad truth is in most cases it’s a handful of overworked activists punching way above their weight. And so it is in LDHQ – although the output might look like it is the result of a fearsome supercomputer processing all known political information and spewing it out in dozens of helpful different feeds… in fact, it’s just Will Howells and Mark Pack, with, between them, a …

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Posted in Humour and Online politics | 3 Comments
The Voice

Brian Paddick has a new website

By The Voice | Tue 8th April 2008 - 1:00 am

Oooh, that’s nice, and it looks to come with the full set of social networking – not just Facebook, but also Myspace, Twitter, YouTube, Flickr and (new today) Eventful.

Posted in London and Online politics | Also tagged , and | 4 Comments
Alex Foster

Twitter is working for Paddick

By Alex Foster | Sun 6th April 2008 - 3:40 pm

Two messages today:

Could you display a window poster for our campaign? Just email [email protected] with your name & full postal address

Then, barely an hour later

Wow – that was a very swift and large response to my message about window posters!

It’s nice to see MASSIVE RESPONSE translating to the Twitter era.

Posted in London, News and Online politics | Leave a comment
Mark Pack

Another Twitter first?

By Mark Pack | Tue 1st April 2008 - 6:33 pm

On the basis that Lynne Featherstone was really the first MP to start Twittering (Alan Johnson’s temporary use of Twitter for his Labour Deputy Leadership bid being the half-exception), that likely means that this update from Lynne is the first Twitter update that’s been done from the benches of the House of Commons.

Conservative MP Douglas Carswell earlier this year became the first MP to blog from there.

Imagine, perhaps, a future that includes MPs doing blogging or Twitter updates as, say, the Prime Minister answers questions at PMQs. It would add a whole new perspective to the event.

Posted in Online politics, Parliament and PMQs | Leave a comment
The Voice

Brian Paddick to hold Twitter interview

By The Voice | Mon 31st March 2008 - 2:10 pm

From their latest press release, it looks like the Brian Paddick campaign is stepping up its online campaign a notch:

Liberal Democrat Mayoral Candidate Brian Paddick is taking part in an exclusive interview on Twitter, the popular text messaging service – the first time this has been done by a UK politician.

Brian Paddick will be offering an exclusive interview to all of his ‘followers’ on Twitter. Users who have signed up to follow Brian Paddick on Twitter will be able to text a question and answers will then be sent to the questioners and posted on his official website.

Commenting, Brian Paddick said:

“I’m …

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Posted in London and Online politics | Also tagged | 4 Comments
Alex Foster

Lynne the twitterer

By Alex Foster | Sat 22nd March 2008 - 5:54 pm

Congratulations to Lynne Featherstone, who has become, she believes, the first British MP to use the Twitter instant messaging system, just slightly less than one year after I first suggested on my blog, and in the forums here (party members only).

Those of you unable or unwilling to read the forums will be unaware that the idea was initially dismissed out of hand by influential party bosses, before they went on to embrace it wholeheartedly.  Now the entire Innovations Department is happily twittering away.

Barely a month afterwards, the party used Twitter for a highly successful if under-used

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Posted in Online politics | Also tagged and | 21 Comments
Alex Foster

Lib Dems by SMS

By Alex Foster | Wed 31st October 2007 - 10:10 pm

The party today relaunched its free SMS service to send urgent news direct to your mobile phone.

The Twitter service was last used to send out information on election night, and has been quiet since.

But today a new message arrived:

Thanks for subscribing – we’re relaunching! We’ll send occasional party news, like TV spots, leadership poll news and campaign launches.

And in amongst the details on the party’s website about the leadership election,  was the following information

Get news by text message with Twitter
You can now get free new updates from the party direct to your mobile phone using the

…

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Posted in Online politics | 5 Comments

Free SMS (text) results service

By the founding editor | Thu 3rd May 2007 - 2:44 pm

Liberal Democrat Gain!I’ve just heard from former Lib Dem Voice man Will Howells, now of party HQ, that you can text “follow libdems” to 07781 488126 for election night results from Party HQ (results will also be available at www.libdems.org.uk). The texts you receive from the service are free.

When you text the number, you are signing up to a free service called Twitter. You will get a reply saying “Awesome! Please reply with your preferred Twitter username.” Text back the username you like to use on websites, and you’ll be …

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Posted in News | 1 Comment
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