It doesn’t matter how they got there, and it doesn’t matter if a significant proportion are spammy. The @downingstreet Twitter account hit one million followers on Sunday afternoon – making it surely the biggest e-government hit in a couple of years at least. At zero setup cost. And zero marketing spend.
The question is – still – what do we do with them all?
For anyone needing background, here’s an easy link to all the posts I’ve written on the subject. To anyone I met WordCamp who’s reading this: check out the URL construction. Did you know you could do that??
Responses
Correct.
The fascinating thing is what happens with a change of government.
The feeling I get is that it has been quite well managed to transfer as an institutional rather than political channel.
Matt
Moreso than any other civil service comms project, Matt? Strictly speaking, of course, it should continue regardless of any future change of government. There shouldn’t even be a requirement – or even an expectation – of a website redesign for number10.gov.uk. In theory anyway…
>Moreso than any other civil service comms project, Matt?
I’d suggest that it would be one of the more difficult to get right (or one of the easier ones to get wrong?), since I’d describe the No 10 site and Twitter feed as being far closer to “politics and policy presentation” than most other government sites.
Hmm… Inevitably I suppose, it’s going to feel a little bit closer to ‘politics’ than other things, because the No10 staff is there to serve and cover the Prime Minister and nothing else. Some of those involved on the web stuff have an explicit Labour background, others don’t – or keep it very quiet if they do.
In all fairness, I think they do an exemplary job of walking that tightrope. But yes, when we get a change of government, it’ll be fascinating to see how the transition works.