Slashdot Mirror
Twitter As a Campaigning Tool
labourstart writes "Meetup.com wasn't designed to help presidential candidates and Twitter wasn't supposed to be a campaigning tool. But LabourStart's Eric Lee argues that Twitter may be just what unions and other campaigning organizations have been looking for — a way to cut through the background noise and reach their members."
I've never used twitter. But I keep seeing so much about it - a comic at Penny Arcade, articles, political events and such. So I thought I'd check it out. Went over to sign up and was told that it was under heavy load and to come back later. (Twitter is over capacity. Too many tweets! Please wait a moment and try again.) I've tried a few times in the last week or two. Looks like that thing is suffocating under its own weight.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
If it's to be a really great campaign tool, then surely it should be something that a large percentage of the population use. I don't think that's Twitter somehow.
That, these guys are basically sending out junk mail too. They want to send out more messages like - "Oh give us money, and we will save you".. just like everyone else on the planet.
I swear, we could make a bunch of ELIZA - like bots that would replace 99% of the political activity web sites for all political persuasions...
This is my sig.
So if I understand this right, its a sort of forum where people with similar ideas can communicate and contribute?
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
I'm getting so tired of having to read detailed documents that describe a candidate's position on complex and important issues. A distillation of once-meaningful information into painless and catchy sound bites is just what the doctor ordered.
Web2.0: I love when people Flickr my cuil and digg my boingboing until my google is reddit and I start to yahoo
say, a bunch of birds holding a large whale with nothing but string...
http://www.maniactive.com/states/2008/06/top-2-reasons-to-love-technical.html
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Am I the only one who thought the headline was accusing our good friend twitter of being a tool who is campaigning?
seems to be down to much to use for much of anything
Imagine if you weren't allowed to use roads because a bus company complained about your driving 3 times. --skunkpussy
...get rid of all relevant, important information, use talking points and soundbites and nothing but image and slogans to campaign. People will fall for it, and vote based on that, whilst being distracted from everything important.
I'll call it "politics".
There are mountains to cross for those that are willing.
Now we have one more campaigning tool in the race.
Personally, I had heard of twitter on and off in various places but had never really gotten into it. I now find myself regularly visiting the phoenix lander twitter page for short, informative and sometimes funny commentary. They`ve used twitter to reach out to an audience that might not of otherwise kept up with such an interesting project. I`ve found mny of the questions addressed on the page to be things I often wondered about myself regarding such projects (what OS does it run, how is the communication handled, recent discoveries).
http://twitter.com/MarsPhoenix
I don`t see why any group (politicial or not) wouldn't be able to use this to their advantage as means to cut through the noise so to speak.
Almost every web interfaces has been corrupted by paid or non-paid advertisments. Even Facebook sucks now. Spit is just around the corner.
The Hillary Clinton campaign began sending out 'tweets' and eventually had over 4,000 followers. The Barack Obama campaign did the same thing and got 44,000 followers. That says something about the success of the two campaigns in using new technology.
Perhaps that says something about the age of the people supporting either campaign. How many 40yo stay at home moms are getting tweets?
Religion and politics, without the flame. godgab.org
I would think that candidates would want distance themselves from anything that makes them look like twits. If they were to make some statement on twitter that caused a stir, then suddenly it's "Did you see the latest twit-cast?". Jon Stewart, Colbert, Leno, et al, would have a field day.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
Excuse me, but is Twitter not raw, undiluted background noise itself?
Digg is the ultimate campaigning tool. No. Boingboing is the ultimate campaigning tool. No. Damn day traders.
I clicked on this article because I read "twitter as a camping tool" and I thought to myself - how odd that someone worked out a way to use twitter with an FPS (HalfLife, Quake?) to "camp".
You have no idea how disappointing it was to see a reference to "campaigning" once I started to read the post....
KK4SFV
I agree.
There is a reason why I ditched my cell phone - it was too annoying - and got rid of my pager.
If you need me and you don't know my number, don't send my cryptic 200 char text messages and think that makes up for you missing brunch.
Unless you're a cute girl.
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At one time the net was about free exchange of information. Now it's been preempted by a bunch of slime ball politicians.
I recently put together a workflow for allowing users to create an Obama commercial using their own voice: http://www.earfl.com/obama. You use a phone as the upload tool and then email the finished product to your friends. I think hearing a friend's voice and their reasons for supporting a candidate can be much more convincing than seeing a twitter feed of talking points from "campaign central". Try it out, No login or registration required! (disclaimer: I wrote parts of earfl.com)
... has been the one that's been going on over the last few weeks on Twitter between "Fake John McCain" and "Fake Barack Obama". Mostly because the fake versions of the candidates are free to swear and say what they REALLY think, unlike the real ones.
Read my blog.
It's like opt-in stalking. Duh.
Wow, that's a /. sig plus less than half a punched card. Most /. posts would end early to mid-rant. You'd never know if they had a valid contributi
Invenio via vel creo
I use twitter, and every day I have to block another few 'webcock' (webcocks) followers. Also, someone has developed a script to just follow every single person there is. You look into someone and see they have 3 followers, and are following 66,000 people. Not good, twitter.
I never thought of labeling him as a campaigning tool.
(laugh... it's supposed to be a bad joke)
Twitter is an anti-MS, pro-GNU Slashdot regular.
Some of his posts are quite interesting to read.
Some consider him a troll.
You be the judge: http://slashdot.org/~twitter
I can see long substantial economic position papers being written on twitter in much the same way as I can see great poetry ..........
dang, too long
Me Is Good Speechwriter - Other Guy Is Bad Speechwriter - Vote Me! Me Like Rock! Me Strong Like Cave Troll!
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Coming from the absolute master of crapflooding, I'll take that as a compliment.
"It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations, if you live near him." - Tolkien
Their main problem is their architecture is complete garbage. Get this: one main MySQL server and 2 slaves. That is it. They didn't really know what they were doing when they first designed it. The current system is pretty much the same as it was when it first rolled out. They are supposedly bringing in people that know what they are doing to scale it up but it's taking a long time.