I suspect by now most of you have heard of Twitter and some of you are actively using it. If not, Twitter is a “micro-blogging” service which is now the fastest growing “social network” in the world. Basically, you can broadcast from your account SMS messages up to a maximum of 140 characters in length. You “subscribe” to other people’s Twitter accounts and you receive their “tweets” as they are broadcast. People tend to send tweets about what they’re doing or short thoughts and ideas. It’s kind of like Facebook status updates. Since Twitter is based on an SMS texting platform you are able to send and receive tweets from your mobile telephone, as well as, your computer. It’s like having a news ticker on your phone for your friends.
As Twitter has grown over the past 2 years it has expanded beyond a simple novelty for the digital elite. During his campaign for President in the US, Barack Obama created an account and regularly sent out tweets while on the campaign trail. Obama has over a 170,000 followers. Check-out his Twitter page at twitter.com/BarackObama
Recently, Lance Armstrong has started twittering in real time as he trains for the 2009 Tour de France. His Twitter page is twitter.com/lancearmstrong In 2 weeks, literally, he has over 22,000 followers. Think about that for a second. Every time Lance Armstrong types a short SMS message on his mobile phone to Twitter 22,000 people around the world immediately receive it. That is powerful!!
And even more cool is the fact that you can send a response to any tweet by putting a @ and the username into a tweet of your own. So you could send Lance Armstrong a tweet by putting @lancearmstrong in your response.
Twitter is also now being adopted by mainstream media groups to provide real time streams of articles as they are published. You can subscribe to the New York Times Twitter feed at twitter.com/nytimes and receive the updates yourself.
Nobody is quite certain where all of this micro-blogging is headed technology-wise but it’s a trend that you would be foolish to ignore if you are in the business of communicating with people. However, organizations need to beware not to abuse the “medium.” There are lots of companies that have created Twitter accounts and then used it to spam followers. The “Twitterati” are quick to unsubscribe to these types of accounts.
As you also know by now, I am often frustrated by the way Russia is portrayed in the Western press and on the blogosphere. There are a lot of false characterizations and assumptions made about Putin, Medvedev, and the Russian people. On this blog I try to bring you one person’s viewpoint from here in Krasnodar. Often I will republish a transcript of a news conference with Russian officials so you can read for yourself what they’ve said and how distorted their words can become when transmitted through people who have a beef with Russia.
So, I did a little research to see if the Russian government has taken advantage of the new medium of micro-blogging on Twitter and I was disappointed to see that they are not using it. Rather than wait for someone in Moscow to create a twitter account I have taken it upon myself to get the ball rolling.
Today, I created a Twitter account called Kremlin_ru_eng There is an add-on service for Twitter called twitterfeed.com The service will take any RSS xml feed and automatically turn it into tweets on Twitter. The Kremlin website has three xml feeds available in English. There’s one for Medvedev’s speeches, another for photos, and a third feed which is called a “Unified” feed.
In an effort to track these tweets I have an account at tweetburner.com (it’s a play of words with the RSS tracking company owned by Google called “Feedburner.”) It will tell me which articles and links are the most popular and how many people have clicked on them.
I know, I know, everyone is the West is paranoid about Russia. So to put you at ease, yes I have checked and what I’m doing by “rebroadcasting” these RSS feeds is perfectly fine. At the Kremlin website they have a “fair use policy” which reads,
All materials on the Presidential website may be reproduced in any media outlets, on Internet servers or on any other information supports without restriction on the amount of material and time of publication. This authorisation covers equally newspapers, magazines, radio stations, TV channels and Internet sites. The only condition is that any reproduction or broadcasting of the website’s materials contain a reference to the original source. No prior approval from the Presidential Press and Information Office is required to reprint information from the website.
What I hope to achieve with this “Kremlin_ru_eng News” account on Twitter is to give those of you who are interested in Russia and wish to follow events in the Kremlin an opportunity to have the Kremlin Wire Service in your pocket. If you subscribe, you will be one of the first in the world to read Medvedev’s press releases, see photographs from his trips and meetings, and to know what he’s doing on official business. I have put in a request to the Kremlin website staff to ask if they can also make his video podcasts available through RSS feed as well (Note: Medvedev’s last video podcast was in November so hopefully with the holidays now finished there will be a new one soon – “wink” “wink”).
Update: On January 12th, President Medvedev recorded a new vblog post while on holiday in Krasnaya Polyana ski resort (The site for the 2014 Winter Olympics). Click play below to see for yourself (english subtitles).
The bottom-line is that everyone will benefit from this “Kremlin_ru_eng News.” You, the subscriber, will be as informed as any correspondent from any mainstream media bureau in Moscow and the Kremlin will benefit because more people, in the english speaking world, will hear directly from them on issues of importance. If this “experiment” goes well I will be creating additional Twitter accounts for the Prime Minister’s website and other ministries. Russia’s reputation internationally depends on a two-way communication. (Note: I am obviously very interested to get Alexander Tkachov and the Krasnodar Administration up and running on Twitter, as well. What’s missing is an english language RSS feed. I’ll be speaking with some of my contacts there soon.)
Finally, if anyone in the Kremlin’s communications department is reading this blog post I hope you will add Twittering to President Medvedev social media toolbelt along with video podcasts. He’s not limited to Twittering in english either. There are tens of thousands of techno-savvy Russians twittering away in Cyrillic. I subscribe to 10 Krasnodar-based Twitterers myself. Trust me, news of real “live” tweets from President Medvedev will picked-up quickly by Western media and, like his video podcasting, will reflect favorably on him. If “President Barry” can Twitter than so can “President Dima.”
My twitter account can be found at twitter.com/timothypost or twitter.timothypost.com
