Gary Bivings on Digital Politics Radio- Twitter & Elected Officials: Who is Tweeting, What are They Saying
Continuing his bi-weekly appearance on the Digital Politics Radio show with Karen Jagoda, this past Tuesday Gary and Karen got into a lively discussion as to the best and worst practices, and users of Twitter and social media.
A few paraphrased highlights and the mp3 interview bellow. Next appearance: Tuesday, August 10th at 3:00pm EST.
Q: At the state and local level, What are some of the interesting patterns you have seen?
- Twitter at the Mayoral Level: Cory Booker of Newark, NJ: Very active presence, totally engaged, using it as a way to interact, reach out, ask questions, communicate and be involved in a way you don't (normally) see. Most politicians, (being) risk adverse, tell people what they are doing that day, but are not really engaged on the issues, what people are doing, responding to criticism…
- Gavin Newsom, Mayor of San Francisco- From (Speaker Pelosi’s) constituency, has 200x as many followers. Antonio Villaraigosa- Mayor of Los Angeles: 21k followers, Mike Bloomberg, NYC: 22k, Richard Daley, Chicago, 2,400, Picking up the end, Mayor Adrian Fenty of Washington DC with less than 1,000. (Gary was being generous, as Mayor Fenty are 325 total followers- TG)
Twitter Followers:
- GB: When your looking at followers, we need to take it with a grain of salt. It’s like the when people based their success on websites and the simple idea of hits. So you have to figure of the million following Booker, they really can't (all) vote or (be) influential.. It is interesting how different folks have different levels of freedom, or feel comfortable using the medium…
Adoption of Twitter and Aversion of Risk:
- GB: You wouldn’t think of Arizona as being Twitter central, both Senators have it, in the House- all 7 members of Congress have it. Arkansas is good, California and Florida are about half. Kentucky is very interesting. (Besides) Rep. Brett Guthrie, nobody seems to be using it.
KJ: We do have the footnote of Rand Paul…
- GB: In the House of Representatives: Of those who Tweet, about 1/3 of Democrats do, and 55% of Republicans tweet, with an average following of 1,500. So when you see Rand Paul with 6,000 followers, that’s not bad, doesn't compare to someone like Sarah Palin. (For a comprehensive listing, check out TweetCongress)
KJ: How important is a national following to some of these local campaigns?
- GB: It’s hard to pull apart in sense that you have to look at each individual follower to see if they are relevant, because with Twitter, you can set up anonymous accounts, and a lot of these accounts are not credible or verifiable.
- KJ: What makes a good vs. bad presence?
GB: One congressperson starts out his tweets with a quote from the scriptures, from the Old or New Testament. There are some that just start everything with a verb: Stop by historical museum, great groundhog history, I am on TV tonight, etc… Eric Cantor uses it like Cory Booker. (Cantor) is not quite as engaged, but lets you know where he stands on issues, what's going on, some inside baseball, some policy stuff, whereas most use it like a contemporary email.
Other highlights:
The Dark Side of Twitter, Tweet Storms, Andrew Breitbart vs. Shirley Sherrod, NAACP vs. Tea Party…
Gary Bivings: Twitter & Elected Officials: Who is Tweeting, What are They Saying : Play Now | Play in Popup | DownloadPBS NewsHour and Social Media – How to Make the Most of Your Content
Have you ever wondered how hierarchical traditional media organizations are finding their place in the new media world? The Bivings Report got to find out just that about PBS’s iconic NewsHour – a program that has been on the air for more than thirty years and whose follows span many generations. This event was a meetup sponsored by DC Media Makers (DCMM) and featured NewsHour’s media coordinator Kate Gardiner.
During the course of the DCMM-sponsored discussion held at the NPR headquarters, a media-savvy audience and Gardiner talked about everything from Facebook fan pages to their preferences for comment management systems on blogs. NewsHour’s unique demographics do not lend themselves perfectly well to the internet age, since the average age of their viewer is over 55. However, this creates an opportunity for Gardiner and her team of online and broadcast journalists to focus on winning over and retaining younger viewers. The NewsHour program is now posting a larger quantity of online-only content and story exclusives in order to continue engaging with their fan base.
Some interesting statistics about NewsHour’s online outreach:
- Between all of the show and anchors’ Twitter accounts – a tweet is able to reach over 80,000 people
- NewsHour’s Facebook fan base is 60% male, and 40% female (the mathematic opposite of Facebook’s actual gender beak down)
- During the recent BP oil spill, the NewsHour website had more simultaneous viewers than the NewsHour television broadcast
- Only 31 percent of PBS’s news traffic comes from web referrals
- The May 2010 NewsHour Gulf Leak Meter widget allowed users to estimate how much oil has been spilled into the Gulf Coast, and resulted in millions of page views to the NewsHour site
For Kate Gardiner’s own notes and discussions on the topic, see her blog post at – http://posterous.kategardiner.com/a-summary-of-my-social-media-engagement-stati
Below is the video we took of various parts of the speech:
Live-Streaming API Will Transform Your Twitter Experience
Let the onslaught begin.
Today Twitter unleashed their new “live-streaming” API, which enables users a totally new way to enjoy the micro-blogging service sweeping the world. For users who access twitter through the multi-account capable, user-friendly app Tweetdeck, there is a new API option called “User Streams” that is now in “a limited testing period”. Keep in mind: there are an estimated 3,000 tweets sent per second.
All the features of Twitter you know and love will now be streamed in real-time, including the user timeline (your main account), direct messages, retweets, new followers, favorites and even additions to lists. By taking these updates into real-time, Twitter is continuing to reach it’s full potential as an information delivery service. Now without refreshing, reloading or any action at all on the part of the user, you can watch Twitter flow like the beautiful river of information that it truly is.
Users hungry for the action can either pay $20 for a registered version of Echofon for Mac, or sign up for one of Tweetdeck’s preview releases. Until you get your hands on this to see it for yourself, there’s this blistering fast preview video that will give you an impression of how exactly Twitter will be the newest and truest incarnation of the “real-time web”.
A Recap of NDN’s Panel on Advancing Internet Freedom
On Tuesday July 20th 2010, NDN hosted a speaker panel titled Advancing Internet Freedom: Tackling Barriers to the Global Free Flow of Information. This event featured Daniel Calingaert and Anita Ramasastry two prominent authorities on the topic of internet censorship and the power of online freedom of speech. During their presentations, both presenters discussed topics ranging from mobile economic opportunities abroad to further US government regulation of internet content.
The NDN forum touched heavily upon the groundwork laid by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s January 2010 speech on internet freedom that was lauded as the first of its kind for a foreign policy decision maker. Clinton spoke about issues of international censorship over the press and individual media publishers, and warned about the “new information curtain” that is cutting off information to developing nations with totalitarian governments.
Both speakers at the “Advancing Internet Freedom” event discussed the role of domestic and foreign government in regulation and expansion of internet services – particularly as they relate to ordinary citizens. Echoing Secretary Clinton’s remark that “the world’s information infrastructure will become what we and others make of it,” Anita Ramasastry discussed the importance advocating for oppressed peoples through greater access to technology and information. Subsequently, Daniel Calingaert spoke about the rights of citizens and the importance of not accepting censorship in the name of political stability. Both speakers stressed the empowerment of citizens though the creation and sharing of content on social media and internet websites.
Unsubscribing from the Groupon Email List
I love the coupon site Groupon and happily subscribe to receive their DC deals via email. However, at some point I accidently subscribed to receive updates on Chicago deals through one of my secondary email accounts. This morning I got an email offering 50% off tickets to a Bon Jovi and Kid Rock concert in Chicago, and decided today was a good day to unsubscribe. I clicked the unsubscribe option from the email and was immediately taken off the list and presented with this page.
Naturally, I immediately clicked on the Punish Derrick link, launching a Flash movie in which Derrick gets a cup full of coffee thrown in his face. At the end of the video, they ask me to resubscribe (see below).
This is really clever. First, they make the unsubscribe process easy and entertaining. Second and more importantly, they smartly try to reengage with me in an effort to get me to stay. I was tempted to stay on the list to reward their cleverness, even though I have no use for Chicago deals. Well done Groupon. That’s how it is done.