A bit of a surprise this morning to discover that the venerable Today Programme is on Twitter… with its first tentative tweets as far back as September last year, and a (more or less) daily service since December. The username ‘todaytrial’ doesn’t imply that it’s being taken too seriously… although it’s built into their BBC website pages. I suspect someone may now be regretting that choice of username. And it’s a rather incestuous ‘Following’ list, consisting solely of other BBC services.
Downing Street‘s Twitter efforts are front page news in the Guardian this morning – see the actual text here – which should help them pass the 1500 friends mark imminently. Meanwhile, it looks like the Tories are taking Twitter more seriously, with updates being written in Twhirl – and, intriguingly, nothing from Twitterfeed in a few days. Still only a modest 60-odd friends, though. That Labour account is still nothing more than Twitterfeeding, with no indication if it’s official or not, and an even more modest 21 followers.
PS: I see a few other recent political additions to the Twittersphere include Boris Johnson – who appears to be texting them in; and Comment Is Free, for whom Twitter might be the key to making the whole CiF experience more practical. @brianpaddick has been at it since January; if it’s official, @kenlivingstone is leaving it a bit late.
Responses
Excellent to get the front page for your latest efforts. I hope that helps No.10 feel justified in doing it and that it encourages others to join in.
Let’s put it this way, Shane. There can’t ever have been too many government communications – full stop! – which have been reproduced, verbatim and at zero cost, on the front page of a national newspaper… 🙂
I saw this in the grauniad and actually wasn’t impressed. bit too trivialised.
you should know though, simon, that this is being raved out in the States by those following the webbie side of the election.
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The Brian Paddick Twitter stream is official – although I’m not convinced it is being used to full effect. One of his campaign team invited me to a Twitter Q&A session with Brian. I posted about it here: http://simoncollister.typepad.com/simonsays/2008/04/brian-paddick-r.html