The highlight of my week (so far!) has been attending a presentation by REAL Twitter employees – complete with American accents – here in Canberra.
It was part of a series of Gov 2.0 events facilitated by Pia Waugh (@PiaWaugh) from AGIMO and held at the swanky new DEEWR offices in the city.
Adam Sharp (@adams), Head of News and Government and Mike Brown (@mikeisbrown), Director of Market Development are in Australia as part of Twitter’s move to establish a presence here. Seems they have been holding meetings and briefings with Australian government officials and news outlets.
Adam Sharp, Pia Waugh and Mike Brown in conversation at the Gov 2.0 event this week.
By their own admission, the presentation was a farily basic overview Twitter, its power to engage and keys to success, particularly in the government space.
Never mind, there was some interesting information about how government, in the US, is using Twitter to engage with constituencies.
In the US, 100% of Senators, 94% of Members of the House of Representatives and all but one, State Governor are on Twitter.
Why are they there?
Well, Adam tells us that Twitter users are opinion leaders and more likely to be involved in current affairs. On election day in 2008 (US), there were 1.8 million tweets posted. Today, there are 1.8 million tweets posted every 6 minutes. A large, influential and growing audience for public officials.
But he also promotes Twitter as having evolved into a great tool for government, for these reasons:
“Scalable, Retail Governing”
We all know face-to-face interaction is the most powerful method for engaging with each other. But that’s impossible for government institutions (and representatives). So over time governments have turned to a range of methods to broadcast messages to stakeholders and communities. Often with only limited success.
Twitter now allows government to return to one-on-one engagement with stakeholders resulting in increasing faith in government while demystifying institutions and those who serve in them.
Check out how President Obama used Twitter to chat to constituents during his #My2K campaign last year.
“Town Square in your Pocket”
Remember when we all had time to hang around in our town squares and catch up on the latest news? Well, no, not really. But that doesn’t matter because Twitter now enables all of us to be part of the conversation any time, anywhere.
Two-way engagement, without having to hang out in public? Yes please!
“Real Time Measurement of Citizen Response”
Keeping in mind Twitter users are probably not fully representative of most constituencies, it does provide a handy tool to track real-time responses to issues of the day.
Remember, when people are watching TV, they’re usually holding a device. So instant commentary on a politician’s interview or policy announcement (or even a government advertisement) can be monitored, in real time.
Adam Sharp cited two great examples of Twitter being used by US government agencies to monitor issues in real-time.
Firstly, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention finds tweets are effective for monitoring ‘flu outbreaks because they’re in real time, unlike hospital admissions data.
And the US Geological Survey is developing a Twitter Earthquake Detector because tweets noting “shaking” were sometimes appearing 30 seconds before the quake registered on their seismometers.
In many ways, the presentation was a sales pitch – unnecessary for me, as I love Twitter. Next time, I’d love them to explore in-depth case studies of how Twitter can be a game changer in the public conversation.
In the meantime, it will be interesting to see how our government agencies respond. If they can get it right, magic can happen!
About the speakers
Adam Sharp is Head of News and Government for Twitter based in Washington DC. Adam works closely with News organizations to help them use Twitter to achieve their goals of improved news reporting and superior content syndication. Adam also leads Twitter's team dedicated to empowering government agencies and individual members of government. Government agencies and individual representatives (and their staff) employ Twitter to educate and inform citizens, provide superior government responsiveness and collect actionable feedback on public opinion and sentiment.
Mike Brown is Director of Market Development at Twitter. Mike's responsibility is to grow Twitter's user base in priority markets outside the United States. Recently, Mike has been leading Twitter's efforts to establish an Australian presence by hiring a local team and working closely with some of the leading organizations in Australia.
