Disappeared News

I don't understand Twitter. But it's huge, and getting more huge, so the problem must be me.

Even the two democratic presidential candidates are using this microblogging service:

http://twitter.com/barackobama

http://twitter.com/hillaryclinton

I couldn't find John McCain or Ralph Nader, though. How long will it be before they also tweet?

There was an article last week about this by Kristen Gorski on the Huffington Post which begins:

While traditional media outlets excel in wordiness during election season, one social media outlet proudly flaunts its brevity. Twitter is a free "microblogging" service that lets anyone share online what they are doing or thinking, in 140 characters or less (including spaces). Many Twitter users are now "tweeting"--sending out--their political views to their "followers", or readers. A new website called Politweets gleans the "tweets" which mention political candidates' names and then displays them on its site in real time. What Politweets captures hints at public opinion and trends regarding the election. It has also become a news outlet, where private citizens, traditional media, and even the candidates' themselves tweet about facts, opinion and web links to anyone who reads.

Check out the above-mentioned Politweets too. It's a great website for a weekend job.

I kind of doubt that either Obama or Hillary are thumbing out text messages all day. They have probably assigned the task to a young person on their staff. Although, looking at the tweets, maybe it's not someone who really understands how people tweet. It's just another support job. They do YouTube also, of course. And Flickr, Myspace and Facebook. But again, not the candidates, I'm pretty sure.

They'll do almost anything, it seems, except maybe talk about stopping the war in Iraq (find a tweet on that subject!).