Twitter Expert

Matt is an internet consultant, commentator, freelance writer and Project Manager based in the UK. He is available for hire. Matt edits the Wardman Wire and Twexpert, and writes at Poligeeks, Total Politics, and occasionally in several other places.

This is the first of two or three posts responding to the Convention on Modern Liberty.

Rather than going down to London, I stayed at home working and followed the stream of messages from the conference and external observers. This first piece highlights new insights from watching the conference alongside the “Labour 2.0” online campaigning conference held in London on the same day via the comment streams on Twitter and video.

But I start with a description of the mechanisms and services that I used to follow the conversation from the East Midlands, and a few thoughts about their importance.

The Convention on Modern Liberty is happening today, and is proving excellent.

If you wish to follow it, you can follow the live feed here.

Or you can follow the conversation on Twitter via the “Hashtags” (i.e., keywords) #coml and #modernliberty.

The best places to follow the hashtags are probably at the websites Twitterfall or Monitter.

Quite good. It’s somebody marketing something.

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.

Earlier this week Comscore published data showing the percentage of internet users in European and Asian countries who accessed Social Networking websites in December 2008.

As you can see, Europe has a far higher penetration, with only Singapore and South Korea from Asia in the top 10 countries when the lists are combined.

The UK has the highest penetration at 80%. I was surprised that South Korea, with their advanced broadband infrastructure, only came 10th.

I put out a piece on Saturday looking at Twitter growth rates on Labour List. I’ve had my own mini Twitter “lunge” over the weekend, so I’d better put my own statistics up before anyone else does.

The reason for this lunge is that I am writing an E-Book: How you can make Twitter Fly, and have done some catching up. The jump in growth is due to my following bloggers I recognise on Twitter, and “auto-followbacks” which are used by some UK new services.

Anyway, this E-Book should be coming soon …

To keep in touch …. follow me.