Twitter for politics, and in the media

This is largely about social media, with a focus on Twitter.

Premieres using Twitter
Its great to see Kevin Rudd start twittering – follow him at KevinRuddPM.

He’s following in the footsteps of BarackObama. Who may just have won an election by harnessing the amazing powers social networks.

Did Obama use Ning? It would be interesting to see what Marc Andreesen has to say about the entire campaign, what was used, what was done, etc.

Twitter in Malaysian media
Oon Yeoh writes about twittering, like SMSing,is here to stay, in a column he writes for an old media newspaper.

I find it funny that he refers to the Malaysian public as “comfortable” with Facebook “status updates”, considering Friendster is still a lot more popular in Malaysia. Twitter itself is probably not big in Malaysia, because no one likes spending a premium sending a SMS overseas. I especially like:

One early adopter, who is currently studying abroad, uses Twitter as an efficient and effective way to keep her boyfriend updated about what her day is like.

Good, now she can keep her stalkers up to date as well :) Oon seems to add a questionable paragraph:

It’s not so good as an archive of news though. And that’s mainly because its search engine is quite lousy. Perhaps Google should gobble it up and improve its search capabilities.

Google did gobble up a “Twitter-like service” – its called Jaiku. Twitter themselves, gobbled up Summize, and you now have search.twitter.com (how else do you think we update the status page on foss.my?).

Its just amusing how many other errors there are in the article, but this is the drivel that is the print media, yes?

Update: Read How Techies can Improve Democracy and Governance, an interview with Silona Bonewald. (I conducted a short one, a few months back, too).

Update 2: Read about Obama’s plan to use YouTube for weekly “fireside chats”. I continue to be impressed.

2 Comments

  1. ShaolinTiger says:

    I have to disagree with a couple of things, AFAIK Facebook is now bigger, Friendster was by far the biggest in SE Asia region but now Hi5 has taken over Thailand, Myspace is pretty big and Facebook is huge here now.

    Also as for Twitter, most people don’t send via SMS, they send via an app like Twibble with minimal data charges. And basically free for those with unlimiated packages.

    Plus many use it from the web interface as a micro-blogging tool rather than a mobile update.

  2. James says:

    Malcolm Turnbull’s had a twitter for a few months now (as TurnbullMalcolm). There’s also quite a few fake politician twitters, eg KevinRudd, MalcolmTurnbull, and my favourite, StephenConroy.


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