Politicians on Twitter

Twitter Use By U.S. Politicians

An increasing number of U.S. politicians are using Twitter, with President Barack Obama (@BarackObama) and Senator John McCain (@SenJohnMcCain) still leading the pack in terms of followers.  It’s likely that the Twitter usage by U.S. politicians during the 2008 Presidential race, has spurred more rapid adoption of Twitter and other social media by politicians.

Not surprisingly, the bulk of the content within politicians’ Twitter profiles consists of reaching out to constituents.  Some of the uses include:

• Announcing media and other appearances
• Referencing new blog posts
• Requesting co-sponsorship on bills
• Rallying support for and against specific bills

It appears that many politicians send their tweets directly from the Web, with a few using popular desktop and mobile clients such as TweetDeck and TwitterBerry.  The inference from this is that many politicians are doing their own tweeting and not necessarily engaging staff for contributions to their Twitter streams.

A list of U.S. politician tweeters and their current number of followers can be found at http://congressional140.com/tweeting.php

Twitter Use By Politicians in Some Other Countries

Kevin Rudd (@KevinRuddPM), the Prime Minister of Australia, has a very respectable three quarters of a million followers on his verified account.  Prime Minister Rudd signs a lot of his tweets with “KRudd” — presumably to reinforce the fact that he does his own tweeting.  A list of tweeting Australian politicians can be found at http://ozpollietweeters.pbworks.com.

The verified account for the British Prime Minister’s office is @DowningStreet.  It does seem to make sense to tie the account to the office, rather than to the politician — the next Prime Minister will inherit a strong following.  At the time of this writing, @DowningStreet shows an impressive 1.5+ million followers.

There is no shortage of unverified Twitter accounts for politicians throughout the world — some of them more flattering than others.  Perhaps more world leaders should consider jumping on the Twitter bandwagon to get their messages out into the Twittersphere.