Social networking platform Twitter, have allowed political adverts. Not only are they accepting politically motivated tweets, they even set up an entire team dedicated to monitoring it. The first tweet went out live and was a sponsored tweet by GOP candidate for election, Mitt Romney.
Twitter are working with a selected group of politically motivated individuals and party committees for this new found political drive but this move is, in effect, a probation to see how well it goes and how to move the idea forward. The other activists involved in the move will be publishing their tweets in the up coming weeks and will be identified by the “Promoted” description underneath as well as having a Federal Election Commission disclaimer.
Heading the new Twitter team will be Peter Greenberger who has experience in this field as he was political sales advisor for Google previously to this.
This is great timing for the upcoming American Presidential Elections in 2012. Although it is only American based so far, if it’s successful, maybe other nations will be following suit? With so many nations in turmoil, social networking may be one way to get policies and beliefs out to the masses and help engage the public widely. Only Yesterday did Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg make a party broad cast on TV so should social media be just as engaging in the matter?
Should Twitter be seen to be politically activated? Politics can be a heated subject with some people and clashing views can cause problems. However, if they are giving all parties/people equal tweeting rights, is that fair? Would be great to hear your thoughts about it.
~ Articles mentioned in this post: http://mashable.com/2011/09/21/twitter-political-ads/
~Image Source: https://twitter.com/#!/MittRomney
