Can’t let this morning pass without a quick blog really. Lots has been said already about the role of the internet in the US election over the last year or two, and being politically neutral it’s not really our bag to get involved in campaigning related issues here at Delib.
But this article was interesting in the Guardian yesterday, a claim that this election was the ‘Twitter Election’, with people, especially yesterday, sharing voting related information quickly and easily through twitter.
Now, to me, Twitter’s always seemed a 2.0 too far really, at least for a mass market. The functionality is essentially limited, and can’t at the moment see its hook to take it usefully into the democratic sphere. That said, there’s a lot of hype about it, Radio 4 claiming the other day that blogging was over and that it was now all about Twitter, apparently because there are so many blogs out there and so few good ones. A bizarre statement, there are lots of restaurants out there too now, and very few good ones, but you wouldn’t say the restaurant was over now would you…
Think the Guardian article flags up a good point for Twitter though, the ability to gather and focus information quickly and easily around a single event or occurrence. Having people Twitter their thoughts and experiences during a distinct process can be a really useful way of pulling together and evaluating collective knowledge. It’s also free to sign up to, which is great, and a convention for content tagging and collation is also growing within the community at the moment.
Only downside remains though the user base for it, which you’d have to be sure was got right. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the article quotes a Twitterer from yesterday, “Twitter is Obama country”.
