Republicans have taken to twitter with all the enthusiasm of a kid at Christmas with a shiny new toy. And it is not just Republicans; everyone from Oprah to Shaquille O’Neal seems to have a twitter account. It has gotten so bad that Keith Olbermann had a twitter account that he didn’t even know about. However, as Tyler points out in an earlier post, the fascination with twitter is starting to fade.
So what does it mean for Republicans in the 2010 elections? It means that signing up for a twitter account does not make your campaign web 2.0 certified. Twitter is one online tool out of many. It is not our online savior.
Patrick Ruffini has a great piece about the effectiveness of different online tools over at the NextRight. His point:
“…the Internet is not just blogs and Twitter. New media is a big world — from websites, to e-mail lists, to fundraising, to online advertising, to search engine optimization, to GOTV applications, to internal databases, to APIs, to YouTube, to mobile, to emerging platforms like iPhone/Android, and yes, to social media. Done wrong, creating a Twitter account and holding a few blogger conference calls is the lowest cost form of engagement and can be a fig leaf for continuing business as usual in other parts of the organization. The hard part is integrating new media in everything the organization does, using it to transform volunteer recruitment, or open a new eight and nine figure revenue stream.”
To be successful in 2010, Republicans will have to employ all available web 2.0 technologies, in creative ways, to engage voters, donors and activists.
