The European Commission, and Commissioners themselves, have progressively taken to Twitter over the past couple of years as a way of communicating with (at?) EU citizens. So how are they doing? This blog entry gives a quick summary. My starting point is that a good Twitter account is an engaging...
This is not a post about the politics of David Cameron. It is instead an analysis of what the Tories did wrong – in communications and web tech terms – with the launch of the @David_Cameron Twitter account that finally saw the light of day yesterday. Let’s not forget –...
If you’re observant then you will notice a new icon above the menu in the top right of the screen – the one with the tick on it. That’s a link to my profile at App.net, a new social network that is trying to break the mould of the ad-financed...
What is Twitter? Is it a network between (for want of a better word) ‘ordinary’ people like me? Or is it a spotlight into the lives of the rich and famous, with Twitter the means for these people to transmit their messages? If you read mainstream media coverage of the...
There was an interesting debate on Twitter yesterday between @PaulLewis and @RowennaDavis about the latter being paid £75 to tweet about the Sky News show Murnaghan. It turns out that for more than a year non-Sky journalists have been paid £75 to tweet for the two hours the show is...
Adrian Short has written an excellent and widely-tweeted piece entitled What Makes Twitter Twitter? that looks at the future of the social network. The crucial line in the piece is “Twitter used to be where people talked. Now it’s where money talks.” – very true. But Twitter likewise needs to...
My presence on various social networks was getting rather out of hand, so I’ve had to work out a rule of thumb as to who to add on each network. Here are my conclusions – comments most welcome! Facebook – I’ll accept friend requests from anyone I’ve met and – if...
I’m on a bit of a Twitter high these days. On the weekend I passed 5000 followers (probably only to drop below the level again once Twitter eliminates some spam-bots), and today two political Twitter league tables have been published. I am the 10th most-followed person in UK think tanks...
Yesterday current Mayor of London Boris Johnson renamed the Twitter account from @MayorofLondon to @BorisJohnson and kept more than 200000 followers. The URL listed with Twitter is now the website of Boris’s re-election site and not the GLA site as previously. There are posts at Liberal Conspiracy and Political Scrapbook...
I’ve amended the design of this blog a bit, simplifying things and moving away from a amended version of Twenty Eleven theme, and instead using a (lightly) adapted version of Busby. This theme incorporates some HTML 5 elements, and also is much neater on devices with small screens. One aspect...
The Independent has been creating a bit of a stir today with its “The Twitter 100: Britain’s titans of the Twittersphere“. Sunny Hundal was particularly happy that he ended up joint top of the Politics Top 10. The problem is that the methodology of this list is highly questionable. Indy journalists...
In the social media training work I do, there are some themes that I keep coming back to. This post summarises some of those things, and gives links to resources. Some of these things are behind my thinking, even if I do not always state them explicitly. 1. 10 things...