Simon Collister, PhD

Strategy + Consulting

Twitter

UK Government’s BERR launches YouTube Channel

by simoncollister 4 Comments

I've just spotted that the UK Government's Department for Business and Regulatory Reform (BERR) has launched its own YouTube channel (I wonder if it's the handiwork of @neilyneil?).

One of the first videos uploaded is a piece to camera by Lord Carter talking about his recently published Digital Britain report:

Pleasingly BERR have opened up the comment section to allow viewers to discuss and feedback on Lord Carter's report.
Unfortunately, no-one has contributed yet. See Joss's comment below. Looking again this morning it seems the comment option is now turned. I'm sure it wasn't yesterday when I looked… looks like BERR are trying to drive discussion to their own destination www.digitalbritainforum.org.uk which, in its own words, is a "discussion site …created by the Secretariat for the
Digital Britain Steering Board, to provide a space for you to engage
with us directly in an online debate about Digital Britain." Wow! The "Secretariat for the
Digital Britain Steering Board" – how social is that 🙂

It's worth noting that there is already a huge volume of discussion of the report online. Just take a look at a Twitter search for the hashtag #digitalbritain. I'd recommend Lord Carter get online himself and started engaging in the discussions already happening.

Technorati tags: BERR, Lord Carter, Digital Britain

Twitter case studies: Bad and er… bad

by simoncollister 1 Comment

Twitter_2

This isn’t a particularly constructive blog post, but I thought I’d share two great examples of bad Twitter use.

The first one I didn’t even bother clicking to view their profile page, because frankly why would I want to having received the notification email pictured left?

I mean, that’s not even trying is it? It’s not even setting up a Twitter stream as an affiliate link farm and pretending to be a real person.

It’s just doing what it says on the tin: Top Affiliate1. Still, I suppose it’s at least ‘authentic’.

The second example of Twitter abue is slightly less forgivable. I received a notification that Coca Cola Zero was following me on Twitter (albeit in Portuguese) so I took a look at their profile thinking how interesting it would be to see what the brand was doing on Twitter.

Amazingly (and presuming it is an official Coke branded site – although I have no reason to think otherwise) the Twitter feed is more or less being used as a spam site. Take a look at the screenshot below:

Coca

You should be able to make out that the user is following about 5,000 people (me included despite not speaking Portuguese) while only having 200 followees. Also, although you probably can’t make it out, they have only posted two tweets in over two weeks. That’s a FAIL in my books.

As a footnote, I was in Brazil last week speaking to PR professionals – so I wonder if someone I met works on the Coke Zero account and has added me. If it was – feel free to drop me an email and I’ll tell you where you could improve 🙂

Technorati tags: Twitter, FAIL, Coca Zero

Public sector goes Twitter crazy

by simoncollister Leave a Comment

Untitled

There was a flurry of activity on the UK & Ireland E-Democracy mailing list today with a Dave Briggs flagging a number of local authorities embracing Twitter.

Dave’s list includes

It’s interesting to see how each authority is using Twitter. St Helens is using it to announce news stories; Southend seems to have used it to update the count during the local elections; Stratford-on-Avon are using it in a fully conversational way while Barnet seem to have registered their profile and not much else.

Another and interesting recent addition to Twitter is UK Parliament who seems to be someone behind the scenes at the Houses of Parliament website. This will be really interesting to follow as the HoP website provides a wealth of information from the day’s activities in the house and having someone interpreting some of the day’s parliamentary news is a great idea.

However, my main bugbear is that there isn’t RSS on the HoP website. Given the amount, variety of info and frequency of updates is the perfect site to use RSS. That’ll be my first question via Twitter!

Technorati tags: Twitter, Local Government, UK Parliament, Edemocracy

Paddick’s a Qwitter

by simoncollister 3 Comments

Paddick

I blogged back during the London Mayoral elections about Lib Dem candidate Brian Paddick using Twitter as a tool for a virtual Q&A session with the electorate.

Well it seems that his dalliance with the tool has ended pretty soon after the election happened.

Personally I think it is slightly worse that he is signing off with a "I’m winding down now" message which kind of implies that he has been a regular user of Twitter rather than what was essentially a engagement-initiative-as-PR-stunt.

Maybe that is a bit of an extreme take on it, but wouldn;t it be more authentic to just say: "I tried this during the election to engage with voters and now the election is over I’m signing out."?

Hat tip: Dominic Campbell

Technorati tags: Twitter, Brian Paddick, Politics, Mayoral Elections

*UPDATED* Brian Paddick reaches out to Londerners via Twitter

by simoncollister 7 Comments

Paddick

Hot on the heels of Lynne Feathestone MP and No 10 Downing Street twittering I received an email last night from the Lib dem’s Head of Innovation, Mark Pack, telling me that the Lib Dem mayoral candidate, Brian Paddick, is holding the world’s first interview using Twitter.

Mark’s email told me:

"Liberal Democrat Mayoral Candidate Brian Paddick
is taking part in an exclusive interview on Twitter, the popular text
messaging service, the first time this has been done by a UK politician.

Brian
Paddick will be offering an exclusive interview to all of his
‘followers’ on Twitter.  Users who have signed up to follow Brian
Paddick on Twitter will be able to text a question and answers will
then be sent to the questioners and posted on his official website."

I was struck by two things:

  1. the emphasis of Twitter as a text messaging service
  2. the offer of an exclusive interview with brian via Twitter

I wondered why Twitter was being sold as a text messaging service when it is soooo much more. I suspected it was due to sell the idea of Twitter to a wide audience. Alan Johnson’s deputy leadership campaign manager, Stuart Bruce, confirmed as much to me via Twitter this morning.

The second point is more subtle and seems to indicate the Paddick team’s lack of understanding that Twitter, like other social web tools, are shifting the balance between organisations and their stakeholders.

The simple fact that Paddick is on Twitter means he is open to conversation with his ‘followers’ – so why set up a specific ‘exclusive interview’? Or perhaps they are using the story as a neat media hook!

Either way, Ken Livingstone isn’t on Twitter and despite the Tories new media savvy Boris and his team consider online debates as not involving "real people". At least Paddick is opening up a new front for direct engagement with his followers/supporters.

*UPDATE* Stephen Waddington reports back via Twitter that he posed a question 20 hours ago and is still awaiting a response.

Technorati tags: Brian Paddick,  London mayoral elections,  Lib Dems, Twitter