There are certain basics to Twitter. Thankfully, they're simple. Follow everyone back who follows you (you can exclude porn bots, spammers etc.), be yourself, have conversations regularly and write about interesting stuff.
Don't have private conversations on Twitter if you're part of a campaign, you might jeopardize your campaign. Like this guy did. You've got freakin' cell phones, you can text, send emails, send those emails on your cell phones.
Twitter is for communicating with the public. Duh?
We want to let you in on something: In the next two weeks, we are going to announce Matt's choice for lieutenant governor, and we are going to do it exclusively to our Twitter followers .
Not on Twitter? It's easy to sign up. Just follow this link and it'll walk you through the process.
But that's not all.
We've had a busy couple of weeks, visiting cities all over Minnesota, launching our plan to create jobs throughout the state, inviting our primary opponents to debate the issues, and much more. In case you haven't been keeping up with us in the news , on Facebook , or on TV (see our new ad! ), our campaign manager, Dave Colling, has put together another video update for you. (You might remember the first one , featuring Dave's "pet" squirrel.)
The August 10 primary is fast approaching, and we want you to hear straight from us about everything we're doing to make sure we have a Democratic governor in January!
Finally, as always, we appreciate your feedback. Contact the campaign any time at info@entenza.com.
I read an interesting piece at Daily Kos today about how candidates from a random sampling of Senate and House races nationwide are doing in terms of social media. The author was trying to answer, objectively, how Democrats were doing against Republicans. Her reasoning was she doesn't think that the meme that Republicans are kicking our butts on social media is all that true.
This essay marks the beginning of an occasional series examining just that. Today, I'm focusing on some races for open Senate seats, two Republican, two Democratic. I'm also focusing on Twitter and Facebook. There are many more races to cover and many more forms of online media to look at -- how many times have their YouTube videos been viewed? Are they engaging with the blogosphere? What are their online ad buys like? Online fundraising, texting...there's a wealth of media to check out. But Twitter and Facebook are public metrics that are readily comparable.
We'll expect candidates to have more Facebook fans than followers on Twitter, because there are many more people on Facebook. But advertising on Facebook can rack up large numbers of fans relatively quickly, so a case where a candidate's Facebook-to-Twitter ratio seems out of the ordinary may suggest that the campaign has been advertising heavily on Facebook. (Which may be a good idea, mind you.) Also worth noting, some Republican candidates (including Peter Schiff in today's group) have created splash pages on Facebook -- when you search for them and initially go to the page, instead of seeing a normal Facebook wall there's...a splash page -- big graphic, sign-up, etc. I haven't yet found any Democrats who are doing that.
With this in mind, how do the competitive races in MN stack up? I'll examine the MN-GOV, MN-02, MN-03 and MN-06 races.
Okay, I'm in my PJ's and I'm hunting a YouTube video on a completely unrelated video to the topic du jur: Select URL, type "youtube.com" and click the Search-b...what?
bloggers at the Minnesota Progressive Project contend that Parry's past posts were decidedly more controversial until the candidate erased 33 posts that might be perceived as offensive. As proof, they posted screenshots of two posts that have allegedly been removed from Parry's Twitter feed.
...
When asked if he had written those statements, Parry admitted he had posted the statement about Obama.
"I know specifically about what you're talking about - the tweet that I had sent using my opinion and fact," Parry said. "My opinion is that our president is arrogant and angry. The fact is that he is a black man. Now if the Democratic Party and the liberals want to take my opinion and the fact and mix it together and use it to bring a bad light about me and keep them away from discussing the real issues they can do that all they want. They're grasping for straws."
Parry was vague about whether he was the author of the other post tying Democrats to pedophiles.
"I would think that's wrong. If it's on my account I wouldn't know how that one got on there," he said initially.
When pressed, he said, "I don't remember reading anything that would connect me making a statement like that."
When asked if he had not posted it, Parry said "As I recollect, I would have to have read something that would have created me making a statement like that."
Parry then dismissed the matter as a Dem-directed smear campaign meant to distract voters from the real issues. It is unclear if the MPP is affiliated with the DFL, but the site has links to DFL opponent Jason Engbrecht's campaign site.
For Mr. Parry's information, MPP is in NO way affiliated with the DFL or any DFL campaign -- as soon as I can figure out the WCN's registration confirmation system, I'll post a comment on the piece to that effect. Nice try though, making racism and bigotry into a neat little political squabble.
It's especially hilarious that Parry has no defense for one of the horrible tweets, and tries to pass the other one off as "factual." Would he have referred to President Bush, for example, or even President Clinton (to maintain the political boundaries) as a power-hungry, arrogant white man? Or is it more likely that the terms "arrogant", "power-hungry", and "black" when used together in this context are really just dog-whistle terms for "uppity Negro"?
As for Parry's claim that this is a DFL-directed smear attack against him -- seriously? You think the folks on Plato Boulevard had any idea about this ahead of time?
Seriously? Have you seen how disorganized they are right now?
No.
This was not just MPP vs. Mike Parry, this was Bluestemprairie, Blog of the Moderate Left, MNGOPWatch, and a host of others crowdsourcing the story in realtime. This stuff was publicly available, and didn't require any digging from oppo researchers in St. Paul.
Whether others had access to Parry's Twitter account or not, what's on there is in his name, and what was on there -- BEFORE it was removed -- was a set of some pretty horrible things that should be part of the narrative of this race, and Mr. Parry should be taking responsibility for those things rather than ducking and covering.
Of course, if he were really taking responsibilities for his actions and those of whoever he claims deleted those tweets on his behalf, he would withdraw from the race right now.
OK, maybe you went duck hunting, or to the gun show, or even followed a DFL Candidate to an event - at any rate, you missed all the fun stuff the GOPers were doing at The River Center in St. Paul last Saturday during their GOPer Convention. Well, today's your lucky day; not only was the ol' TwoPutter down there covering the event, I captured the best of it in the manner today's technologically "hip" folk get their info: tweets!!!!
Yes, if you missed the opportunity to toss a ten-spot (plus parking) to the GOP to see veterans protesting the GOP at a GOP Event; missed seeing Gov. T-Bag actually in-state at the Civic River Center; if you missed the rare opportunity to see Bachmann MotorMouth Overdrive give a speech and NOT rip ACORN; well, I got your back - I went through an' used the tried 'n true method of cut 'n paste to same some o' the best tweets from the festivities!
So, go beyond the fold, and read the tweets from #rpm09 and those covering it (that haven't blocked the ol' TwoPutter), and you, too, will be "in the know"!!!!
And, hey! With today's technology, you, too, can cut 'n paste and retweet the best from last Saturday, in St. Paul!!! I didn't comment on 'em; we'll do that in the comments section!!!
There are times when reasonable people read something, and just know - JUST KNOW - that what they just read just cannot - CANNOT - be correct. And just this morning, Laura Brod provided reasonable people another one of those times.
In someways the more things change, the more they stay the same. On Wednesday, I attended the tenth anniversary of the Peace protests at the Lake Street Bridge. A protest sign is one of the original short messages. Twitter is the newest version of short messages.
In the movie, The Lord of the Rings, a string of bonfires is lit in succession to ask for aid in war, which represents an actual historical use of instant messaging. American Indians did instant messaging by smoke signals. At the 2004 Republican National Convention, the peace protesters used a precursor of Twitter to communicate and organize. The recent Twitter communication of Iran protests is the best use of instant political communication used for organizing. I was also very impressed with Uptake tweeting the last days of the legislative session, which was followed by many.
There are two opposing forces working on Tweeting or Twittering. One form of Tweeting is to only speak when you have something important, which is the form that I use (TheGraceKelly). Some people use Twitter like a Dear Diary function, and post notes like "I am doing my grocery shopping, now!". That is the social function of tweeting - staying in touch. Hmmm, maybe my last social Tweet will be, " I am dying now, signing off, have a good life!".
Right now, I find an overwhelming amount of noise in Tweeting, Facebook, blogging, RSS feeds and even emails. So now comes along the sorting functions like recommends, best-of features, and aggregators. Now, I am just waiting for the Spam Ads. Opps, the spam is already posting on trending topics, with a Clean Tweets fix. See I am still in the signal fires age!
The parallels with history suggest perhaps we should communicate more with intention in mind.
To Hoekstra is to whine using grandiose exaggerations and comparisons.
It all started with a simple, foolish tweet. On June 17th, GOP Congressman Pete Hoekstra compared the life and death struggle of Iranians trying to get their message out via Twitter to the Republican Party's tussle with Democrats. (See quote above.) The Twitterati began satirizing Hoekstra's tweet (see lulz below).
And that's how the Hoekstra meme was born.
In case you're wondering what all the hilarity is about, it started with this tweet from Congressman (and Michigan gubernatorial candidate) Pete Hoekstra:
Iranian twitter activity similar to what we did in House last year when Republicans were shut down in the House.
Actually, Congressman, what's happening in Iran is not at all similar to your caucus's whining, moaning, and stickinthemudding on every single piece of important legislation in the past two years.
Showing oneself either to be this out of touch or this willing to exploit people halfway around the world for positive political comparisons, however spurious just shouldn't be allowed. Honestly, I'm a little embarrassed for the guy, if only because it puts him in the same Epic Twitter Fail neighborhood as Newt Gingrich.
But that's what makes things like this so hilarious:
