Poliblog Perspective

This article is a continuation of my previous reflections on Twitter in Politics.

I have spent part of the last week or so building a new blog about Twitter and what can be done with it called Twexpert. As such I’ve been overexposed to the section (still small - 6 million) of the Net community that is using the service.

I thought it would be useful to revisit the list published 12 days ago by Mr Dale’s list of “Top Political Blogging Twits”, to have a look at the rate of change of Twitter use in the political niche. These are listed in the same order as they were on Iain’s site on February 19/20th. I collected data on the morning of the 4th March.

First I’ll list the data, then make some comments.

Top 25 UK Political Blog Twitterers

Iain’s previous figures are in brackets

1 (3). Derek Draper 2695 (1686) - Editor of Labour List
2 (1). Tom Watson 2404 (2065) - Labour MP & blogger
3 (2). Iain Dale 2370 (2061) - Tory blogger
4 (5). Alastair Campbell 2000 (1180) - Former spinmeister & new entrant to the new media
5 (6). Andrew Ian Dodge 1768 (1031) - Libertarian blogger
6 (4). Guido Fawkes 1432 (1183) - Anarcho blogger
7 (13). Paul Dennett 1413 (580) - Blogger at A Progressive Viewpoint
8 (9). James Cleverly 1310 (778) - Tory GLA member & blogger
9 (8). John Prescott 1185 (822) - Retired Labour “anti-Grandee” (that’s meant as a backhanded compliment)
10 (7). The Fabians 1020 (869) - Sunder Katwala & the Next left blog
11 (10). Lynne Featherstone 822 (681) - LibDem MP & blogger
12 (12). Dave Hill 713 (635) - Left of centre blogger in London / commentator
13 (11). Steve Green 711 (652) - Tory blogger at the Daily Referendum blog
14 (14). Mick Fealty 602 (522) - Blogs at Brassneck & Slugger O’Toole
15 (20). Sadiq Khan 590 (361) - Labour MP & Minister
16 (17). Tom Harris 534 (417) - Labour MP & blogger
17 (18). Craig Elder 512 (390) -Web editor & Webcameron supremo at CCHQ
18 (15). Jeremy Jacobs 505 (454) - Right of centre supporting “corporate presenter”
19 (22). Tim Montgomerie 499 (346) - Founder of ConservativeHome
20 (16). Danvers Baillieu 491 (448) - Tory blogger
21 (19). Will Howells 424 (369) - Works at LibDem HQ & writes for LibDem Voice
22 (21). Scott Redding 423 (348) - Green Party blogger from Coventry
23 (23). Dave Cross 363 (346) - Blogs at davorg
24 (24). Charlie Beckett 351 (245) - Director of POLIS at the LSE
25 (25). Ed Vaizey 319 (245) - Tory MP for Wantage and blogger
26 (26). Devil’s Kitchen 285 (243) - Libertarian blogger

(I am not updating this list, since it is a straight comparison - but I’m quite happy to have your own numbers posted in the comments)

Reflections

1. For Political Twitterers, the overall numbers are still relatively small, even compared to just London.
2. There’s more attention from bloggers on the left - probably generated by the big splash made by Labour List and the Labour20 conference.
3. The general growth rate is actually less than I was expecting; a useful cold shower after a couple of weeks of hype.
4. There are different strategies here - which you can see to some extent by doing a Twitter Counter graph. Smooth growth (Dale, Guido, Lynne Featherstone, Alistair Campbell) implies an “organic” strategy, while jumps and flatspots (Draper, DailyReferendum, James Cleverly to an extent, and me .) imply an approach “searching out” followers.

Wrapping Up

I think that at present the Twitter service is a significant opportunity to get politics out of Westminster. It will be lost if political bloggers and politicians do two things:

1. Search out and talk to followers inside the political blogging ghetto.
2. Or find followers outside the ghetto and then only talk to them about Parliamentary Parish Pump Partisan Politics.

This came across as one of the key points raised at the Progress Online conference, but do they (or the Tories for that matter) have the patience to follow through on the insight.

I’ll write again about my strategy for generating some debate about politics in the outside world.

And please take a look at Twexpert, where I’m putting together an E-Book about how to use Twitter, with a focus on what it can be used for, rather than simply the technology.

Tags: iaindale, labourlist, lynne featherstone, twitter

Without further ado, these are the Wikio rankings for all UK blogs for January. Quite a few changes this month.

Old Holborn continues the completely un-PC climb to No 12.

Bad Science is up at 12, courtesy of the “journalist” who’s name I’ve forgotten who hosts phone-in-punchups on the radio in London somewhere.

And the Wardman Wire is back up to 26.

Oh, and Labour List has bulldozed straight in at No 6 after 1 month.

The Downing Street Twitter Feed has gone over 100,000 followers (i.e., readers) some time in the last few days. Here is a graph from Twittercounter.

That’s a lot, and an achievement not to be underestimated. It has been noted by a number of sites. The excellent Simon Dickson at Puffbox suggests that this is active interest in politics:

Even if there’s no future business model, we’re looking at a phenomenal opportunity here, today. The fact it may not be here tomorrow shouldn’t stop us exploiting it while it’s there. 100,000 people have signed up - actively, voluntarily - to hear from the heart of UK government. Now they’re actually listening, what should we be saying to them?

I’m an enthusiast (and a “booster“) for political participation, and I’m with Simon on “let’s use this opportunity”. But unfortunately the interest isn’t quite as “active” as he thinks, since a signup to the 10 Downing Street Twitter Feed is now part of the account creation process on Twitter. And it is even set as an “opt-in” option.

Looking at the graph at the top of the article, I’d speculate that the default 10 Downing Street feed was added to the Twitter signup process around 11th February when the follower growth jumped from roughly 1000 each day to around 7000-8000.

I’d even speculate that the first increase in the rate of new people following @downingstreet around 14 Jan was when the new feeds were added to the signup process, and the second increase was when they were made “opt-in”.

I can’t judge whether they are only included in the sign-up process in the UK.

Politically, if I was the opposition I’d be taking a careful look at whether that feed is being used for partisan politics. On the other hand if it was I might keep quiet if I was expecting to get the advantage after the next election.

As a further proof of the hypothesis, if you look at a graph comparing @downingstreet with @jodrellbank and @coldplay, two of the other “opt-in on signup” accounts, you see exactly the same pattern:

Sorry guys, but we’re not in a new political age yet.

But let’s get back to positives - just *how* can that feed be used to increase interest in politics.

Earlier this week Comscore published data showing the percentage of internet users in European and Asian countries who accessed Social Networking websites in December 2008.

As you can see, Europe has a far higher penetration, with only Singapore and South Korea from Asia in the top 10 countries when the lists are combined.

The UK has the highest penetration at 80%. I was surprised that South Korea, with their advanced broadband infrastructure, only came 10th.

The data excludes visits from public computers such as Internet cafes or access from mobile phones or PDAs.

Neville Hobson has commented on the European figures in some detail.

Source: European Figures. Asian Figures.

Derek Draper has been building up a large following on Twitter for Labour List, by following all the followers of other bloggers. It happened to Iain Dale, and yesterday I started getting reports that it is happening to me.

There are all sorts of wonderful Twitter related services that people who just dive in sometimes don’t know about, which do things like graph of the growth of your followers. Geeks are good that way. Here’s @derekdraper compared with @iaindale:

You can see the lunge when they said “Right boys, let’s do Twitter now“.

That looks a little “non-organic”, and perhaps even slightly “forced”. This happened on February 6th, and Derek systematically went through all Iain Dale’s followers and followed them. In one way that is fine, since twitter is still a promiscuous medium where people follow you back when you follow them - but it also seems contrived as if DD is the Man from Delmonte and we must all go YES !!!.

Derek has now done the same with me, and he’s welcome to follow all my followers - who are quite capable of looking after themselves, although the Sheep (@ben_gallagher) was rather shocked and has gone into hiding, and I hope he doesn’t swear at the Bishop (@alantlwilson) by mistake.

Playing with our Dolly

The current figures for @derekdraper are following 2035, and being followed by 1905.

Now, the rules of Twitter change at “following 2,000″ and that means we can have some fun. It’s easy, too.

The way Twitter works when you hit 2000 is that you can only follow an extra 10% on top of the people who have followed you back. This is why people with large followings usually have a balance between the two figures.

What to do

So if a lot of us unfollow Dolly that will therefore bring the aggressive growth strategy to a dead stop - or at least until he has unfollowed us in return and found another few hundred more amenable people to grow the Labour List Twitter empire.

PR 1.0 should be history

I’m seeing this all as part of a process of education for Mr D that conversational politics is not about great lunges for growth as if you were some sort of cosmic Musketeer, and an education for the New Labour online strategists that the Whelan-Campbell PR-bludgeon strategy is best left in the dustbin of history.

We’ll get them there yet.

Wrapping Up

I sure hope that UNITE or whoever is funding those interns has RSI insurance in place and pays overtime.

If you want to continue following the Labourlist Twitter Feed after unfollowing Dolly, you can do it by reading the RSS feed for @derekdraper.

I didn’t realise what I was taking on when I volunteered for the Carnival of Modern Liberty. The posts have been coming in all week like bills from British Gas, and the doormat is completely buried.

So, here we go, in a slightly less animated style than Jennie last week.

The Convention on Modern Liberty

Who should speak at the liberty bloggers event? posted at Liberal Conspiracy.

Ron Broxted - The Convention on Modern Liberty. posted at LiveJournal.

Leading article: Fight for our liberties - Leading Articles, Opinion - The Independent posted at The Independent.

Modern Liberty posted at Their Contempt For You Is Total.

Little Man in a Toque » Blog Archive » Discussion piece: The Convention on Modern Liberty posted at Little Man in a Toque.

Timothy Garton Ash: Liberty in Britain is facing death by a thousand cuts. We can fight back | Comment is free | The Guardian posted at Comment is Free.

Stuart Winton presents The liberty paradox posted at Planet Politics.

Keeping your Mind Free

What Freedom Means to Me posted at Philosophy Forums.

Be Mass Media Free posted at we overstep.

Remembering what Mr Gordon said about being British.

Centralised Power

Guy Herbert: Another day, another Home Office power-grab | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk posted at Comment is Free.

Control of Dissent

Seumas Milne: According to the UK government, we are all extremists now | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk posted at Comment is Free.

Data and Databases

EU Data Retention Directive endangers democracy | open Democracy News Analysis posted at open Democracy News Analysis - Comments.

For *all* parents posted at Sometimes It’s Peaceful.

White Elephants are Expensive

The cost of the surveillance state posted at Peter Black AM.

State surveillance to cost billions posted at Emergency Services News.

Police and the Public

Sleepwalking towards a police state. posted at Obsolete.

Why can’t we take pictures of policemen? posted at the Telegraph by Philip Johnston.

Poor at mind reading? Snap a copper and get ten years in the slammer posted at calm, almost too calm.

ID Cards

The next six groups to get ID cards? posted at Liberal Democrat Voice.

Union refutes claim that airport workers now back ID cards - vnunet.com posted at The most recent News from VNU Business Publications.

Things that should be easy to fix

Henry Porter: MPs fiddle while parliamentary democracy burns | Comment is free | The Observer posted at Comment is Free.

Contrarians and Counterpoints

Irked Stonewall presents The Great Slavery Excuse posted at Why I Loathe.

Money Free World posted at we overstep.

CoML: Animal Rights and odd bedfellows posted at Though Cowards Flinch.

I’m not going to the Convention on Modern Liberty posted at donpaskini.

Responding to the Convention backlash posted at Liberal Conspiracy.

International

Employee Free Choice Act: An Insult to American Workers posted at Political Castaway Blog: Broadcasting Conservatism to Rescue America.

Obama Embraces the Bush/Cheney Unitary Executive. Again and again and again. posted at Divided We Stand United We Fall.

A bit of the other

Refugees flock to Guardian’s Liberty Central posted at Olly’s Onions.

And things that you can do…

Who Knows What About You? 25 Free Tools to Find Out posted at e-Justice Blog.

Search engine satire is currently easy on Youtube (Example: “Carter-Ruck“, also Google). Fun with Simpson’s clips and a world without libel lawyers.

Finally, I’m building resource pages of bloggers sacked because of their blogs, harrassed photographers, threatened writers and published Cease and Desist letters. Can you help?

Roll up for next week

On the eve of the Convention on Modern Liberty events, the next Festival of Modern Liberty will be hosted at Liberal Conspiracy.

James Graham is looking for people willing to host the Carnival in the future. Email him at modernliberty@quaequam.net.

Phew.

Last week I went to the Nottingham Twestival, and met some interesting people. What is a Twestival? Essentially a drink ‘n’ chat in the pub for people who use Twitter, which in Nottingham meant mainly bloggers and people from the IT or Creative industries.

These are the cards I collected:

1. Al Carlton (@alcarlton) is a blogger and web-entrepreneur who runs Coolest Gadgets and Self Made Minds, and a number of other sites. Bloggers interested in learning about blogging and developing their profile should read Self Made Minds.
2. Marcus Batey (@marcusbatey) is a Graphic Designer based in Nottingham.
3. Wilds Duck Productions is an IT and media company (television, film, DVD, video and CD production; CD and DVD duplication; PA, lighting and staging).
4. I’ll also give a shoutout for Nightair Productions, who are based near Mansfield and local to me. They are an equipment hire company who also do parties. It is run by Andy Monk, who looks a bit like Simon Cowell, but is more civilised.
5. I kid you not, but Caron-Jane Lyon of PCM Creative (@pcmcreative) (”Empowering Social media for business in the UK”) makes part of her living building private social networks using the Ning service, in addition to “normal” websites. Caron was one of the main organisers of the event.
6. Finally, I had a chance to meet infamous local Lib Dem Blogger Alex Foster (@alexfoster).

Here’s a “not Simon Cowell” video:

Tags: al carlton, andrew monk, caron-jane lyon, coolest-gadgets, nightair, nottingham twestival, pcm creative, selfmademinds, wild duck productions

Apropos of not very much, these are the newspaper and media groups we have noticed visitors from in the last few days.

1. Trinity Mirror Group (GB)
2. Associated Newspapers Ltd (GB)
3. British Broadcasting Corporation
4. Times Supplements Limited (GB)
5. Central Productions Nottingham
6. TELEGRAPH GROUP LIMITED (GB)
7. Johnston Press (GB)
8. British Sky Broadcasting Ltd.
9. Reuters Plc (GB)

There have also been around 60 unique visitors from Parliament - which probably means one bloke on 60 computers.

I think that one of the biggest challenges facing independent political blogging in 2009 will be how we can get more resources into blogging, so that independent commentators can continue to hold their own in competition with media-based commentators.

At present - with a very small number of exceptions - it is still only those with other sources of income, or flexible jobs where they are able to devote chunks of time to blogging, or treat blogging as “part of the day job” who are able to maintain regular commentary throughout the day.

There are other challenges - such as how can we compete with media blogs that operate as “hives”, and blogs hosted on sites that compete well in Google due to the presence of 1 or 2 million pages of editorial articles on the same web address

In 2007 and 2008 there has been a major move towards “group blogs” run by anything from 2-3 to 20-30 writers to keep up.

I’ve been experimenting with different forms of advertising, and this is a series of short reviews of “things that worked” and “things that flopped” - from my own and others’ experience. This is just nibbling at the margins, but we all have to start somewhere.

I’m also developing a resource page, based on these articles.

Chitika Premium Advertising Network

What is it?

Chitika Premium is a clever ad programme with clever adverts that only appear to visitors who have come from North America via search engines.

They sit quietly on your blog, and stay invisible unless you receive ne of these visitors. Then the ad unit turns itself and appears however you have designed it inside your blog post. The really clever bit is that the advert is selected based on the keyword that the visitor was searching for.

The advantages for UK Political Blogs are that the adverts never appear to your primary UK audience - rewarding them, but they do appear to the people most likely to click - visitors from search engines.

Chitika also run more traditional banner and text advert programmes.

Does it work?

In my experience. Yes.

I started using one Chitika Premium advert in each post at the end of September 2008, and we will have reached $100 of revenue in the next week or so - mainly from our North American traffic with minimal impact on our main audience. My page looks like this, displaying Chitika Premium adverts using the search keyword “blog”.

That revenue is not major, but it covers our hosting, domain names and other direct blog expenses comfortably on its own. We have roughly 10k visitors a month from North America. You can check your approximate figure for visitors with compete.com.

Chitika pay out via Paypal whenever your balance owing reaches $10, which will be a boon to those who have waited for more than a year to receive payments from other networks.

You can use Chitika Premium ads alongside Google adsense

Sign up to the Chitika Network

The Take Away Nuggets

• Chitika Premium is a good way to monetise your North America search engine traffic.
• The adverts go inside your blog posts and popup an advert responding to the search terms used.
• Adverts do not show to your main UK reader base.
• There are adverts in most of the standard formats.
• Minimum payout is $10.

These is the pre-release list of All Top UK Blogs from Wikio for January 2009. We have some work to do in February, by the look of it.