Twitter is all the buzz recently, ever since it was embraced by the bloggers at SXSW.

Here’s how Twitter works: it’s a mobile blog that allows you to share what you are doing at a given time. You log in to twitter.com, and on your main page, you fill out the open form that asks “What are you doing?” You can write whatever you want in the field. And that’s it — that’s the point. You tell the web what you’re doing.

Other users can add you as a friend to see what you are doing. The real application is when your users activiate the mobile or IM options that allow them to update their status and view others’ status from their cell phone or AIM, Gtalk, or Jabber.
And it’s so easy to change your status. You can either login to the site, e-mail twitter@twitter.org, or send a text message or IM. Your friends will also be notified.

If you check out Twitter, you’ll see that a lot of users tend to post what they ate for lunch, that they’re sleeping, that’s they’re in a taxi, etc. So how can this be used for politics?

What easier way to let your base know where you are and what you are doing? When you’re on a way to a vote or in a meeting on an important issue, or when you launch a website and want people to check it out. It is a way to interact with your supporters, not just telling them where you are but what you are thinking and allowing them to keep tabs on your campaign or activity.

Democrats John Edwards and Joe Biden are the only two presidential candidates that are using Twitter. (Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton both have accounts but no activity.) To be fair, Edwards is a part of a ridiculous amount of social networking sites, many of which the campaign barely uses. But this is one that he actively uses.

Twitter is a great way to be transparent, make people feel a part of a campaign, and keep supporters actively involved in your politician. The open form allows you to write whatever you want and have it sent directly to your “friends’” phone or IM service, directly at their fingertips.

How do you use Twitter? What do you think the best practices are? Leave us a comment and stay tuned to an extended discussion on the political uses MoSoSo (mobile social software).

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 29th, 2007 at 4:31 pm and is filed under 2008 Election, Mobile, Social Networks, Twitter, User-Generated Content. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.