Wednesday, August 26, 2009

POLiWiTTER

Twitter feeds from all the heavies in one place.

Mucking around there finds some interesting stuff. For example, Sue Ann Levy has a twitter feed a website, is against the planned Scarborough wind-project, and has been endorsed by John Laforet.

Tory MP Colin Carrie seems obsessed with bringing KISS to Oshawa.

Jack Layton's page contains this uplifting message from Rev. Dang:

And so on. There is even an English/French, French/English translation function.

Update: Scott Tribe notes in the comments that tweetcommons offers a very similar service.

10 comments:

Gene Rayburn said...

Its too bad that Rev Dang really doesn't have much else to say; unless you really love President's Choice products or PC's Memories of an incompetent PM:Harper Sauce.

Robert G. Harvie, Q.C. said...

Just a thought.. as we villify Jack Layton (and rest assured I have no great love for the NDP leader).

On this day, with the passing of Senator Edward Kennedy, we are reminded that in 1974, he was approached by Richard M. Nixon, who sought his support for legislation to create universal health care in the U.S.

Senator Kennedy refused to support that bill - a move that he, himself, concedes was perhaps the greatest mistake of his political career.

So - sometimes accomodation is more valuable than opposition.

Gene Rayburn said...

"sometimes accomodation is more valuable than opposition."

Very true, though I fear that none of our political leaders are mature enough to realize that.

Ti-Guy said...

Twitter sucks less? With every new application developed out of this platform, it sucks more!

I refuse to jump on this bandwagon. It's just creating a sense of urgency and importance out of relative trivia, when the significant details related to issues of common interest (which is what politics is supposed to be about) have to be better sourced/researched, better summarised and communicated to people when they're in the position to reflect on them carefully . All of that takes time.

The Information Age needs a "Slow Food" movement.

Robert G. Harvie, Q.C. said...

"Twitter" - allowing more people to say less, but faster.

Gene Rayburn said...

a sort of 21st century telegram to nowhere even

Ti-Guy said...

I don't begrudge regular people using Twitter for interests that are narrow in scope, but I'm a little suspicious of politicians jumping into it. Infecting that particular domain of social intercation with even more PR industry *buzz* is what's contributing to people confusing perception with reality even more.

What's popular is rarely what's good or necessary. You discover that when you notice that all over cyberspace, what attracts the most hits, the most commentary is usually the dumbest, most unimportant bit of fluff out there. Worse, "journalists" (specifically, the cretinous editors) are being influenced by it and making editorial decisions that increasingly reflect this pointless hype. Most people I have a conversations with these days can only talk about current events in soundbites, laced with the technocratic jargon du jour that evinces no narrative that takes into account a history that extends more than a week into the past. And everyone else seems to have retreated into their own limited area of expertise and completely out-of-touch with current events.

Lastly, he whispered, conspiratorially, I'm suspecting that the information we really need to be aware of is that which is not being shared, at all. I get the impression that all of this is just a façade of transparency to distract from what important people are really doing.

Oxford County Liberals said...

BCL:

Since Politwitter's creator has been going around to blogposts that feature his competitor and trying to steal their thunder, I think it's only far that I mention Tweetcommons is also something that should be looked at for people interested in political tweets.

bigcitylib said...

Didn't know that, Scott. I found it from Canada newswire. Will mention tweetcoms.

Ti-Guy said...

They both look the same. Jesus...