Nuclear crisis in 140 characters

Tagged with: history of the future, energy, fukushima, twitter, social media,

Who gets my vote?

Coming up: the provincial elections. On March 2, I again have to decide who gets my vote and especially why. Right now I am a true undecided voter. For that reason I am looking for the politician and the party that is able to convince me. So for the last few weeks I’ve been looking on Twitter and television to find the most reliable politician and party.

Tagged with: elections, politicians, twitter, social media,

Twitter revolution

The twitter revolution is roaring in the Middle East. Looking at the headlines at this moment (Sunday evening) they are about continuing revolts in Libya, thousands demonstrating in Morocco, daughter of an ex president of Iran taken prisoner during demonstrations and last but not least calls for revolution on the internet in China.

Tagged with: socialmedia, revolution, twitter,

What happened to the political Tweeps?

A few months ago I wrote about the use of Twitter by politicians. It was election time. Politicians all wanted to influence the public opinion by posting tweets, and they did. Tweets and retweets followed each other rapidly. During some debates on national television, the debate itself was the subject with the largest number of followers on Twitter worldwide. Meanwhile, the battle for the votes was fought and a government has been formed. Our new prime minister Rutte was one of few politicians who didn’t use Twitter during election time. Will he be using Twitter? And how active are the other politicians at the moment?

Tagged with: policy, twitter, politicians, social media,

Does tweeting win you elections?

Since Obama’s election we seem to be convinced that Twitter is an important instrument when you want to win the elections. But the question is: is this true? And is it true in all countries?

Tagged with: framing, twitter,

Politicians and Twitter: are they aware of the possibilities?

It already seems an eternity ago that former Prime Minister Kok took an e-mailcourse on public television. At this moment, you can’t think of a politician that isn’t active on the internet. Only a few days before the national elections, it’s rush hour among politicians in social media. It seems like a politician without a profile on Hyves, Facebook or Twitter, in advance has no chance of winning votes. What is the value of social media for politicians and citizens? What audience is reached? Is the gap between politicians and citizens getting smaller? Are there differences in activity between the politicians? How will the activities continue after the elections?

Tagged with: policy, elections, politicians, twitter, social media,

We're all on Twitter, but nobody tweets

Off course this statement is an exaggeration. Sorry! But recently I stumbled upon an interesting research by Harvard about how people use Twitter. The researchers questioned over 300,000 Twitter users and found that most Twitter users are merely followers. Half of Twitter users tweet once very 74 days, 25% of the users never tweet and 10% of Twitter users account for over 90% of tweets. This is an even smaller percentage than people contributing 90% to Wikipedia (15%). In the comments on second state of dutchtwitosphere you will find similar numbers on the Twitter users in The Netherlands: “50% of the Dutch Twitter accounts have less then 12 updates. 5% of the Dutch Twitter accounts have more then 550 updates”.

Tagged with: twitter, social media,

Tweet

And then there was Twitter. Not less than three years ago nobody had ever heard of this typical social medium. Twitter started in 2006 and is currently enjoying unprecedented success. I have no clue how many people use this micro blog to tell their followers where they are, what they do or what they think. But reading the (printed version of a Dutch) newspaper about Twitter’s overload due to the death of Michael Jackson, it must be a huge crowd. Twitter, in its core, is truly crossmedial. You may use your mobile or your Twitter account. You might want to embed Twitter in your Facebook pages. You name it. It is a fine piece of modern communication tooling which allows us to tell the world what you’re up to. Ever since I was confronted with Twitter, I have asked myself why people – including me – actually use Twitter. Personally I’m not the type to tell the world what I am doing all the time. Maybe I’m too old for this but it requires a lot of handling, both handling of my followers and handling of my micro blogs. I have followers who send Tweets every 10 to 15 minutes and quite frankly, I don’t give a damn.

Tagged with: hyves, micro blog, facebook, crossmedia, twitter,

Learning about social networks through Twitter.

Since I started twittering again last week (after about a year of silence), some 17 emails landed in my mailbox telling me that somebody was now following me. Not a bad score, considering the fact that I have done nothing whatsoever to promote my microblog and considering the fact that 12 these followers are complete strangers to me. But to all who follow me, I say: welcome!

Tagged with: twitter, social media,