It’s not a trick question, I do want to know but I don’t want to start counting characters per page, but 20 pages of guidance on how to twitter in government would be a lot of tweets. The latest government guidance is called ‘Template Twitter Strategy for Government Departments’ and is available here. News outlets are all reporting on it and the author even guest blogged on the cabinet office’s Digital Engagement Blog to promote it. Let’s hope the guidance is put to use sensibly.

So, the big government machine is starting to get onboard with the latest technology fad. Yes we knew that Tom Watson, former cabinet minister was an avid tweeter and that Andrew Stott, the new Digital Engagement Director is well aware of the role of social networks and the tech tools that can spread words faster than the speed of light (almost). Other social network tools such as LinkedIN is being avidly used by Shadow Secretary of State for Business Ken Clarke, who is taking questions from UK businesses on how they are faring in this economic climate. It’s not all well however, David Cameron said just recently in a radio interview that “the trouble with Twitter, the instantness of it – is that too many twits might make a twat”, but one should listen to the rest of the interview so as not to get thrown off by these comments on their own.

Although kids have said they don’t like twittering at all, adults have found a good use of it in getting short messages out to key stakeholders fast. Just the other week, Paul Stobart, CEO at Sage UK had a ‘one hour Twitterfon’ soliciting questions from customers, resellers and competitors. Now, I think that these new social network and tech tools are going to be indispensable both in the short term (election coming up, and what party has not learnt from Obama’s virtual campaign strategy) and long term as a way to get instant messages out as well as feedback whenever one needs it. It’s the new politics and business tool of the 21st century, even David Cameron agrees, saying that if you can’t convey what you want in under a few sentences or so, then you’ve got a problem.

Technorati Tags: politics, Social networks, Twittering

Tags: politics, Social networks, Twittering

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 28th, 2009 at 5:34 pm and is filed under Private Sector, Public Sectors, Technology and Financial Services, Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.