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.

Derek Draper has been building up a large following on Twitter for Labour List, by following all the followers of other bloggers. It happened to Iain Dale, and yesterday I started getting reports that it is happening to me.

You can see the lunge on the graph of follower growth innthe main article when they said “Right boys, let’s do Twitter now“.

I’d like to educate the New Labour strategists that conversational politics is not about great lunges for growth as if you were some sort of cosmic Musketeer, but rather about listening carefully first.

The current figures for @derekdraper are following 2035, and being followed by 1905.

The way Twitter works when you hit 2000 is that you can only follow an extra 10% on top of the people who have followed you back. This is why people with large followings usually have a balance between the two figures.

So if a lot of us unfollow Dolly that will therefore bring the aggressive growth strategy to a dead stop - or at least until he has unfollowed us in return and found another few hundred more amenable people to grow the Labour List Twitter empire.

If you want to continue following the Labourlist Twitter Feed after unfollowing Dolly, you can do it by reading the RSS feed for @derekdraper.

I sure hope that UNITE or whoever is funding those interns has RSI insurance in place and pays overtime.

This item was first posted on the Wardman Wire.

I have started building a record of bloggers who have been threatened in various ways, and also photographers who have been subjected to official harassment.

The pages can be accessed through the Resources menu.

1. A list of UK bloggers subjected to legal threats.
2. A list of published Cease and Desist letters.
3. A list of UK bloggers sacked for blogging.
4. A list of UK photographer subjected to harassment by police or other officials. This one has been built furthest to date with around 15 examples listed and cited.
5. Policies that should be in Manifestos at the next Election.

This is a slow-burn project, as there is so much evidence out there and not much hope of shifting things until we get a new government in the UK.

Links would be appreciated to the pages from editorial articles and the sidebars - this will be a major project for me.

Last week I went to the Nottingham Twestival, and met some interesting people. What is a Twestival? Essentially a drink ‘n’ chat in the pub for people who use Twitter, which in Nottingham meant mainly bloggers and people from the IT or creative industries.