Twitter Expert

The Downing Street Twitter Feed has gone over 100,000 followers (i.e., readers) some time in the last few days. Here is a graph from Twittercounter.

That’s a lot, and an achievement not to be underestimated. It has been noted by a number of sites. The excellent Simon Dickson at Puffbox suggests that this is active interest in politics:

Even if there’s no future business model, we’re looking at a phenomenal opportunity here, today. The fact it may not be here tomorrow shouldn’t stop us exploiting it while it’s there. 100,000 people have signed up - actively, voluntarily - to hear from the heart of UK government. Now they’re actually listening, what should we be saying to them?

I’m an enthusiast (and a “booster“) for political participation, and I’m with Simon on “let’s use this opportunity”. But unfortunately the interest isn’t quite as “active” as he thinks, since a signup to the 10 Downing Street Twitter Feed is now part of the account creation process on Twitter. And it is even set as an “opt-in” option.

Looking at the graph at the top of the article, I’d speculate that the default 10 Downing Street feed was added to the Twitter signup process around 11th February when the follower growth jumped from roughly 1000 each day to around 7000-8000.

I’d even speculate that the first increase in the rate of new people following @downingstreet around 14 Jan was when the new feeds were added to the signup process, and the second increase was when they were made “opt-in”.

I can’t judge whether they are only included in the sign-up process in the UK.

I’m with Simon that the press team web team at No 10 deserve a lot of credit for getting onto Twitter relatively early and using it interactively rather than just as another syndication method. And I’m also glad that a political news feed if being embedded so firmly into the online dialogue - that must be a good thing and phenomenal opportunity is the right phrase to use.

Politically, if I was the opposition (or the government, or Mark Pack) I’d be taking a careful look at how that feed is being used, since it has a reach arguably greater than anything else online coming out of Downing Street.

As a further proof of the hypothesis, if you look at a graph comparing @downingstreet with @jodrellbank and @coldplay, two of the other “opt-in on signup” accounts, you see exactly the same pattern:

Sorry guys, but we’re not in a new political age yet.

But let’s get back to positives - just *how* can that feed be used to increase interest in politics.