About Tweet Progress
See the big blue blob on the right? That is the conservative twittersphere or as Boguta describes it: "tightly interwoven conservative twittersphere." No where on that visualization do you see progressives and that should be troubling to progressive activists.
If progressives are going to maintain their dominance online, we have to be present everywhere, especially in powerful new social media spaces like Twitter. We’ve seen what early investment in the blogosphere got us, and what lack of investment got the right. We have to continue investing in and organizing on new technologies so that we remain ahead of the curve.
What does the graph indicate?
The nodes and connections indicate the use of hashtags. The big blue blob represents the hashtag #tcot (top conservatives on twitter) which is used an average of 2,000 times per day. Before the launch of TweetProgress, the corresponding progressive hashtag #p2 (progressives 2.0) was used an average of 400 times per day (estimates based on hashtags.org searches).
That a tag is used more often than another does not prove in any meaningful way that conservatives are more organized on Twitter than progressives, but those numbers do mean something. Twitter is being used to influence media, to create and establish messaging, to connect distributed groups, and to create communication infrastructure and progressives are failing to take advantage of the opportunities Twitter creates for political activism.
Our goal is to create a more dominant progressive infrastructure on Twitter for the left.
Why are hashtags important?
Hashtags are important because they allow other Twitter users - not only the people who directly follow you, but also elected officials, the media, activists and others who influence policy and conventional wisdom - to identify and categorize posts of specific interest.
Building a community around the #p2 hashtag provides an infrastructure for promoting progressive ideals and actions items.
Twitter is not the be all end all of online activism, but it is an online platform progressives need to make sure we own in the very near future. Drafting more progressives into an existing infrastructure, like the #p2 hashtag, will be the key to more successful actions and issue campaigns. We must increase our organizational efforts on Twitter to take advantage of the unique opportunities it offers. TweetProgress and the community that has sprung up around the #p2 hashtag is where progressives can begin to do that.
Who are the people behind TweetProgress?
Jim Gilliam is a geeky activist building internet tools to shake up a broken political system.
- Act.ly is a suite of activism tools for Twitter, including petitions and events.
- GovLuv connects government leaders with citizens via Twitter.
- Tweet Progress is a directory of progressives on Twitter.
- WhiteHouse2.org imagines how the White House could work if it was run democratically on the internet.
- NationBuilder is the open source platform behind White House 2 being used by Australia 2 and Parliament 2 in Canada.
Prior to his activism and filmmaking career, Gilliam worked at Lycos in the late 90’s, one of the first internet search engines. In 2000, he launched Business.com as its Chief Technology Officer.
Tracy Viselli is a new media strategist, and entrepreneur whose political opinions appear on her own blog, Reno and Its Discontents, as well in the National Journal, Huffington Post, and CNN among others. Viselli uses her social media expertise in her professional life as the Senior Manager of Social Media for QuinStreet, as well as in her second life as a political and social activist. She was a member of the Twitter Vote Report team that used the microsharing tool Twitter as a strategy in election protection efforts during the 2008 election. Viselli also worked with a number of activists on the Voter Suppression Wiki, a resource for journalists, activists, and citizens interested in election protection efforts. Along with Jon Pincus, Viselli co-founded the #p2 hashtag upon which TweetProgress is built.
Viselli has been tapped as an expert both in social media and politics and regularly consults with clients in both arenas on how they can use social media to build relationships that will bring them the results they need to be successful. She is the owner of Reno Fabulous Media and co-founder of Nevada Interactive Media and speaks frequently about topics involving social media, online civic participation, and feminism. Viselli practices what she preaches and maintains strategic relationships through blogger outreach and on social networks like Facebook and Twitter.
Jon’s current professional world starts with Qworky, a nascent startup focused on revolutionizing how people work togetherOther projects incude Tales from the Net (a book on social networks co-authored with Deborah Pierce and my brother Greg), the #p2 Twitter hashtag, Get FISA Right, Voter Suppression Wiki, Twitter vote report and the Computers, Freedom, and Privacy conference, which I’m co-chairing in 2010.
Previous work includes leading the Ad Astra (Analysis and Development of Awesome STRAtegies) project as General Manger for Strategy Development in Microsoft’s Online Services Group; creating the static analysis tools PREfix and PREfast (now available in Visual Studio) at my startup Intrinsa and then at Microsoft Research; security planning with the Windows Security Push and XPSP2 task forces; the EPIC Technology and Democracy 2.0 report on e-Deceptive Campaign Practices; and the National Academies/CSTB software dependability panel Sufficient Evidence?
Current research interests include the interactions between social networks, communication, and diversity theory, trolls, and recasting the field of computer science as a social science. Some of the social science approaches embodied in Ad Astra and the earlier Project Fabulous include asset-based thinking, narratology, cognitive diversity, intersectionality, standpoint theories and situated knowledges, oppression theory, action research, and hot pink beanbag chairs.
Jon currently blogs about all of these topics as well as voting rights, political activism, poetry, and whatever else crosses my mind at Liminal States, Pam’s House Blend, and elsewhere. You can contact Jon at jon {at} achangeiscoming {dot} net or via Twitter, LinkedIn, free-association, Facebeook, or MySpace.
Gina Cooper is the founder and past CEO of Netroots Nation. Her approach to online politics, which relies on technology to bring together engaged Americans and political experts, has become a cornerstone of the progressive movement. Cooper continues to explore innovative ways in which the Internet can help ordinary people become invested in finding their own political solutions, nationally and internationally. Current start-ups include ProjectOnePage, TweetProgress, Middlecoast, and Cooper Strategies. She blogs her personal thoughts as a citizen-turned-political-operative at ginacooper.com and regularly appears on cnn.com as a progressive spokesperson. She served on candidate Obama’s advisory committee for Technology, Media, and Telecommunications.