Monday, January 4, 2010

Politics and Social Media

The UK over the next few months will be in electioneering mode as we work up to a general election (thought to be most likely in May). We're also currently in political mode as we're working on a social media tool for politicians and as a consequence we've been seeing a growing number of political social media tools and websites emerging.

Thanks to my colleague Marc Ames for pointing http://www.kerryout.net/ to me today. This newly-launched site is an online campaign to remove the Labour Party's self appointed ‘Twitter Tsar’, Kerry McCarthy from her Bristol East seat.

The site has already caused a bit of a stir in Westminster, with an apparent threat (via Twitter) from Mrs Kerry herself to Harry Cole, the editor of Conservative political blog http://www.torybear.com/ who set the kerryout.net site up.

There's even been a video posted to YouTube to back the campaign:


Is this the future of online campaigning or just the first signs of a dirty battle between the two major British political parties?

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