Tag: twitter

Preston Manning townhall

Thanks to everyone that tuned in. We had a bit of a technical glitch going in that prevented the recording of the video but we’ve addressed the problem now.

We’ll be doing more of these in the future on a regularly scheduled basis with other voices from the conservative movement so I hope that you’ll tune in.

We also experimented lightly with Twitter for this townhall, allowing people to submit their questions live as they watched the video. We’ll be using it as a channel in from the community so that we can increase interactivity during these events. The political model is not broadcast out from politicians to democratic stakeholders, it’s narrowcast in from democratic stakeholders to politicians.

Announcing RightofTwitter.ca

Today, I launched RightofTwitter.ca, a communitizing website for the right-of-centre twitter community in Canada. In one stop you can view (and follow) Canada’s leading right-of-centre voices in one place and track the live discussion of right-wing Canadian politics at once by tracking the #roft hashtag. There’s also a handy how-to guide for new Twitter users.

Still not on twitter and wondering what it is? Think of it in a few ways. Imagine a Facebook status update about what you’re doing or thinking, make it more public and searchable. Also, think of it as micro-blogging. Twitter users are limited to 140 characters per post (the size of a SMS text message), so Twitter essentially lowers the threshold to online discussion and self-publishing because it doesn’t require that you keep an audience by writing something extensive and on a regular basis and it’s more transactional. Twitter “posts” are more like statements and a good way to pass on links and dissemenate information.

The value of it to the conservative community in Canada is that each and everyone of us on Twitter are following/being followed by members of other communities and interest groups. When you post on a Canadian conservative topic, that can be disseminated and retweeted through other communities. Blogging Tories communitized Canada’s conservative blogging community and RightofTwitter.ca aims to do the same with Canada’s conservative tweeps (twitter lingo for twitter users).

If your name isn’t on the list and you’re on Twitter, send me a tweet @stephen_taylor and if you’re not on Twitter, sign up here.