It doesn't actually mean anything, but well done to Downing Street for topping 1,000 followers on Twitter. The Twitterholic website collates a popularity contest, which suggests there's still a l-o-n-g way to go to top Barack Obama in terms of followers - but they've already issued more updates in a fortnight than he's put out in almost a year.
As for the last week's other Twitter newbies: the Conservatives official-but-don't-tell-anyone account has attracted just 48 followers, but that's still many more than Labour's (official? unofficial?) account, which claims just 10. The ConservativeHome blog features a mere 28, with no postings in a few days... perhaps the novelty has worn off.
8 April 2008
[...] Simon observes that, from Number Ten to Barack Obama, they’re all at it. Perhaps it’s just my rather small social networking and blog reading circles, but it seems like the political world’s going mad for Twitter. [...]
8 April 2008
I think one of the reasons the other feeds are not showing up as having lots of followers is that you can follow by RSS and therefore not broadcast your political allegiance, especially if you know they are not going to follow you back. This essentially turns Twitter into a microblogging one way thing, rather than the two way thing users who know each other think of. Does that make sense...
9 April 2008
Good point, Mel. I guess it cuts both ways: for some, identifying themselves with a specific party or candidate would be a plus. But yeah, maybe Twitter needs a 'stealth' option for following.
It's interesting how many people are coming up with feature requests for Twitter - a sign that it's hitting some kind of maturity? Or worse, at risk of scope creep?