Yesterday I joined hundreds of others at the Politics Online Conference, or #POLC09, for short. The day was full of panels like, “What Effect Will the New Administration’s Use of Tech Have on Congress?” and “A Conversation with the Online Directors from the Obama and McCain Campaigns,” (which was totally heated – guess who was bitter?), as well as “Social Media Analytics: Monitor, Measure and Manage.”
All were excellent panels with talented individuals whom have adopted new media early on, taste makers and influencers – all discussing the implications and opportunities of the rapidly changing communications landscape. Either my Twitter application failed me or it was AT&T’s service, but I wasn’t able to tweet for most of the day. Although I couldn’t update Twitter, it was nice spending the afternoon listening. After all, that is one of the first rules of social media.
A few things for the Twitter 101 students – # indicates a hash tag – or something that users include in their updates. Hash tags come in all forms – for events like #POLC09, for fads such as #SusanBoyle and for sub cultures like #fem2.0. All the user needs to do is include their tag of choice in an update, and the tweet will funnel into a page where only tweets with that tag go.
Here are a few of my favorite tweets from the day.
#POLC09 Screen Grabs
Erica Anderson, Senior Digital Strategist
Tags: #POLC09, New Media, politics, politics online, web 2.0
