2: I don’t really know the ins and outs of it, but apparently it’s good for the country, so I vote yes

Luckily, they kinda balance each other out. The quotes reminded me of this old story from the onion.

Clinton apparently said:

“We should even have a government blogging team where people in the agencies are constantly telling all of you, the taxpayers, the citizens of America, everything that’s going on so that you have up-to-the-minute information about what your government is doing, so that you too can be informed, and hold the government accountable”

Two things trouble me about the article:

1) The talk of ‘the Facebook generation’
While it may still be true that the average user of services like Facebook, Myspace, Youtube etc. is relatively young, we have long ago established that these communities do not appeal exclusively to pimply-faced teens, but cater to a much broader audience. And let us not forget that the users of these services grow older by the nano-second so let’s give the age-ism a rest, eh?
BTW – my dad is one of my most active contacts on flickr, and he turns 60 next years – get my point?

2) The idea of a ‘government blogging team’
While I certainly appreciate the idea of governments using blogs to communicate with citizens, I sincerely believe that the use of blogs should be integrated into the everyday routines and not placed in a team of bloggers whose sole task it is to blog. That brings us a little too close to the mechanisms of the old school PR department. Also, the way Clinton talks about it, the idea seems to be using blogs as a means of providing readers with news updates. If the medium is to make any sense, the emphasis needs to be on conversations with the readers – you know, the fancy two-way type of communications.

But cudos for suggesting it. Let’s see which ideas are realized between elections.

Personally, I could do without the super polished blog posts, the overly edited and TV-like Youtube vids, the head shots on Flickr (I want to see the pictures you TAKE, not pictures of you!), but at least social software has a significant role in this election – I guess we’ll get round to proper and credible use next time.

All that aside, there are two things that interest me the most this time around:

Microblogging

I wrote about this before, but from an American perspective.

I would LOVE to see a candidate or two start using microblogging actively in this campaign.

[UPDATE: Turns out Naser Khader is micro blogging on ZYB - interesting choice of platform. I'd love to hear the reasons behind it - and The Conservatives are on Twitter (it's embedded into a very heavy site, so I didn't notice at first... but at least they've made sure to test everything before they launched ]

The candidates may not have the time it takes to build communities around their twitter accounts (since Jaiku is in private beta, Twitter seems to be the only logical choice in terms of platforms [!]), but I think a heck of a lot can be gained from importing tweets into regular websites and blogs – especially since the candidates will be out and about for the next three weeks, with limited time in front of their laptops. Microblogging could well be a powerful tool.

The use of social networking services

Facebook groups are emerging, and Danish candidates ar rallying for support in already established networks, which, at least when it comes to parties with limited funds, is a brilliant strategy.

How it evolves and how successful it turns out to be is anyones guess. First of all I think it depends on the level of participation and commitment of candidates themselves. But hey, that’s old news, right?

Looking forward to seeing how much of a difference online social networks can make in a three week campaign. And whether or not any of the candidates dare engage in campaign twittering!

To many this may seem like overkill, but in many ways it makes sense, although it can probably be considered ‘preaching to the choir’.

I believe that dedicated followers of a particlular candidate in a campaign may very well be interested in knowing what said candidate is up to at a given time – even if it means just getting tiny updates like ‘speaking in front of this and that crowd of students at this and that college’.

Also, it does seem to give the debate an edge when you are forced to express yourself in 140 characters. For instance, check out this tweet from mr. Obama:

Concice and aggressive, right?

With rumours of an upcoming Danish election this blogger is very much looking forward to seeing which candidate jumps on the ‘micro-blogging’ band wagon first, and whether the choice of platform falls upon Twitter or Jaiku.

Even though I personally prefer Jaiku, I wouldn’t be surprised if Twitter drew the long straw on account of its simplicity as well as the fact that it is an established platform in the American campaign.

What do you think?

Oh yeah, btw, I still consider this tweet from Jack Dorsey one of the coolest around…