“My Social Network on Flickr, Facebook, Twitter, and MyLogBlog.” Photo Credit Flickr User: luc legay
In the last couple of posts I’ve been discussing how recent popularity of Twitter shows some of the benefits and pitfalls of the rising tide/juggernaut that is social networking. I thought I’d take a small case study to look at how this is all playing out in real time at the tips of our fingers.
The perpetual battle between San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom and the uber-lefty San Francisco Bay Guardian has officially gone digital 2.0. Newspapers across the country are struggling and all are working on the inevitable migrations to “new media “ in some form or another… Some better than others.
At the same time, many politicians are taking a cue from Barack Obama’s successful use of text messaging, Facebook and other less traditional forms of outreach in his presidential campaign. Even our favorite computer illiterate politician John McCain Twitters.
My question is: Will the political battles of the future be staged on social media? If I’m right and social media has the power to motivate real world action on the part of users, then we could see a drastically new approach to politics that involves direct outreach to constituencies rather than having it consciously mediated by third party media outlets like cable news. It could be great. It could also be a disaster.
Twitter Fools
Last week SFBG City Editor Steven T. Jones ominously announced via Twitter that something was amiss at the Guardian. The local blogosphere went ape shit only to realize that the worst we could hope for was an April Fools endorsement of Mayor Newsom’s gubernatorial campaign. In anycase, I made sure to pick up a Guardian last week… Maybe Twitter actually does work.
If you recall, in a totally infantile act, the Mayor recently blocked Mr. Jones on Twitter.
Newsom 2.0
Mayor Newsom thinks he is going to get himself elected Governor of California using the organizing power of social media… It’s a smart move given that he’s a Bay Area Mayor. The Mayor posts his activity on Twitter, but unfortunately his posts lack the inspirational quality of the President Obama’s calls to action on Facebook. A week ago, I would have said Mayor Newsom’s slippery personality pervades even the most benign of posts on Twitter. He has gotten better at providing links…. I also have to admit he’s got an impressive following of nearly 200,000 users.
I’m sure he’ll get it town by the primaries.