This last week Al Gore swung by the offices of Current.tv (which, unlike that Internet, Mr. Gore did co-found) in San Francisco, and while he was there he told a small group of “techies, Twitterers and bloggers: “I’ll be on Twitter by tomorrow.”. I guess my question is obvious, why hasn’t he been on Twitter before now? More importantly, why haven’t both political parties (especially Democrats) been more active on Twitter in an official capacity?

I will grant you that with just over 3M users, Twitter isn’t the giant that Facebook or MySpace may be, but the opportunity to find grass-roots leadership has to be significantly greater on Twitter than in some Facebook group that everyone (and possibly their mother) will join because someone sends them an invitation. Twitter is about engagement, Facebook is really about inside jokes, old friends and silly pictures of you and your friends. I’m not trying to imply that Facebook can’t be used as a tool, it most certainly can (and is being) used as a tool by marketers and politicians (so often these two disciplines collide). But the leaders of the movement are on Twitter.

New media (or social media, or whatever you want to call it) is slowly, but surely, eroding the grip that tv, radio and print has had on media for the last several decades, and where are you guaranteed to find the most vocal leaders of the new media movement at any one given time? That’s right, Twitter. Be it Scoble, Brogan, Penn, Owyang, Shel, Chapman, Chaney, etc… they’re all on Twitter, and they’re all talking (oh, and even though their tweets may not be political, they have positions and they are influencers.)

I can understand the GOP being reluctant to engage in twitter (although Rep. John Culberson (R-Tex) is one of the most active new media users in the Federal government at present) given that it leans toward a young/hip demographic that are more likely to vote democratic (or independent) which makes me wonder even more why the Democrats are limited pretty much to Obama’s official account. Why aren’t their party leaders (or at least their staff) joining the conversation?

New media has changed the way that we engage with the world around us, newsmakers are no longer limited to the nightly news, they can be found anytime, anywhere in an online world that has something for every niche you could imagine. There are more political sites than I can possibly count, with more viewpoints than you could ever imagine. But more importantly, the people that have their own blogs, or who are active on twitter are exactly the people political groups need to be engaging, for one simple reason, they are willing to put they’re opinions out there for everyone to read/hear/see, they are not afraid to speak their mind, regardless of who hears them, this makes them exactly what the parties need, enthusiasm (even if it is guised in cynicism.)

The GOP and the Dem’s have spent the last two years talking about change, but they aren’t really changing anything are they? Faces, names and titles perhaps, but what is really going to change in Washington (there’s that guised cynicism)? New media has given traditional politics a chance to become better connected than ever before, but whether or not it will be used to create that ever-present link between the people and our representatives remains to be seen, I hope it will, but I’m not holding my breath.

Then again, I’m an independent cynic, so they don’t want to talk to me anyways, they just want my vote on election day. What about you? Are you a registered Democrat/Republican? Would you like to see your party/representative use new media tools more/less? Would you be more receptive to conversations in this environment?

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