MPs Should Be on Twitter & PoliTwitter Especially

There is a growing possibility of a Federal election sooner than later. The Liberals and Conservatives are neck and neck in the polls and have been for some time. The NDP are running against the Liberals and ignoring the threat of the Greens coming up behind them. The Bloc is old, tired and a spent force politically and not rejuvenating at the party level. Media reports indicate that the next election will be fought constituency by constituency.

In all of this political churn I received an interesting email from Trevor May of PoliTwitter.ca. Twitter is becoming a great tool for political networking and sharing by politicians and political parties.

Many politicians are using it, some more effectively than others. The Liberals are into it and using it more and more. The Conservatives noticed that so they have stepped up their Twitter activity too. Trevor's idea, and it is a good one, that is to get as many MPs as possible on to and into Twitter. His site is a great vehicle to gather all the partisan Tweets at a federal and provincial level. Definitely worth visiting and following. Here is what he sent me:


"I am writing in the hope that some of you Bloggers might lend a hand in getting the word out about the new Canadian Political Twitter site http://politwitter.ca . PoliTwitter is a non-partisan service that uses Twitter to connect elected MPs and MLAs with their Canadian constituents with the goal of increasing engagement and promoting open government.

I would be thrilled if some of you could blog about the site and spread the message about getting MPs to join Twitter. I have a list of all the MPs not currently on Twitter that allows anyone to send emails encouraging them to join.

http://politwitter.ca/page/mps_without_twitter
There is also a timeline showing when each MP has joined Twitter:
http://politwitter.ca/page/timeline

Also for you bloggers Politwitter has a widget that you can add to your site with some copy & paste code. The widget shows Political twitter and is customizable. So if you are a Conservative blogger you could customize it to only show conservative tweets.
http://politwitter.ca/page/widget

Thanks for your consideration, I’m running this site not-for-profit, so I need all the help I can get!
- Trevor May - http://network.canadaka.net/

So if you know any MPs who are not on Twitter - get them going and let Trevor know so we can all follow them through PoliTwitter.ca