K Street Cafe

Check out this video story from NationalJournal.com the featuring clips from the March Internet Advocacy Roundtable on Video Strategy for Advocacy and a video interview with me and Sean Gibbons.

There is a great discussion going on about whether Twitter is a strategy, or not, on the Progress Exchange Listserv. It was launched by Jon Pincus’s blog post on Tales from the Net and rejoined by Colin Delany on ePolitics.

Jon’s post

Colin’s response to Jon

Here is my response:

At the risk of being inflammatory (no offense meant Jon)… come on folks… aren’t we past the days when we refer to a tool (or a communication channel) as a strategy? The internet is not a strategy. A blog is not a strategy. And neither is Twitter.

These are channels for communication and we develop strategies for using them.

I am a big fan of Twitter. And I am always developing strategies for using it. But that is fundamentally different from saying Twitter is a strategy. Twitter can be used to inform people about ideas, promote events, engage conversations, and mobilize actions. And for each of these you can adopt a variety of strategies and tactics (using hashtags to engage different groups, linking groups together, etc.).

I also believe, as McLuhan wrote, that technology is not ideologically neutral. Tools are not just tools that can be used for any purpose. Each communication tool has its own ideology. For example, socially dynamic tools like Twitter are inherently more democratic than broadcast tools like TV. Thus, strategies for Twitter that exploit the democratic nature of the channel will work better than command and control strategies. And vice versa for TV.

What makes Twitter inherently democratic? Well, 1) generally anyone can follow anyone else and 2) no one can restrict who uses a hashtag or how they use it. What makes TV inherently undemocratic? 1) only the producers of the content control the content, 2) access to the channel is restricted, and 3) no feedback loop.

OK… so the ideology of Twitter constrains what strategies work on it (or at least work better), but the bottom line is still: Twitter is not a strategy, but a channel that allows us to pursue a variety of strategies for how we use it.

Surprise! That Facebook fan page you built for your organization has totally changed, and it may have happened right under your nose.

If you’re like many organizations with a Facebook presence, you probably spent a day months (or years) ago carefully crafting your Facebook fan page to look like an institutionally approved multimedia brochure. Your blog’s RSS feed was automatically posting on the side panel; your YouTube videos were displayed handsomely in the center; and the description of your organization’s goals, policy positions and political philosophy were clear and brilliant. Anyone who clicked on your page was greeted with a clean, carefully crafted page. (more…)

Tinker Provides Tracking and Monetization of Twitter News and Trends (Mashable)
A new application for Twitter allows users to easily follow trends and find the related hashtags and keywords for specific events.

4 Ways Companies Use Twitter for Business (ReadWriteWeb)
Sarah Perez takes a look at multiple examples of how businesses and organizations are using Twitter.