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.
Am I the only one who thought the headline was accusing our good friend twitter of being a tool who is campaigning?
Now we have one more campaigning tool in the race.
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!
Digg is the ultimate campaigning tool. No. Boingboing is the ultimate campaigning tool. No. Damn day traders.
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)
If twitter and his sockpuppets could just keep their posts under 140 characters, I wouldn't mind as much.