A look at some of the week’s goings on with politics and social media. Also how a drunken night caused a leak of epic proportions and that some videogames aren’t making us smarter.

3 of the West(minster)

Has the web registered?

How much impact has Facebook had on voting registrations? Not perhaps the millions it could have had but still a step in the right direction. What a lot of this says to me is that a TV Event can happen over night and is expected in politics at this time of year. But social media requires much more time and longer relationships.

Who has David Cameron been talking to?

After several anecdotes from David Cameron on people he had spoken to up and down the country a meme was quickly formed on Twitter. Some clever chap then turned this into a random generator for Cameron anecdotes. A great example of how you can quickly tap in to the popularity of an idea.

Yahoo! UK Elections 2010

Yahoo are promoting their Election coverage with this funny yet worrying video. “much people don’t know much about politics!” food for thought.

3 of the rest

BBC: Brain training doesn’t train brain

Turns out the hugely successful Brain Training game wasn’t making us smarter, who’d of thunk it? I guess I should get back to those books instead then…only the pop up ones mind you.

This Is Apple’s Next iPhone

This amazing story of how an Apple engineer lost his prototype new iPhone and it ended up all over the tech blogs. For a company that are infamous for their high levels of secrecy this is a truly a major gaffe!

School District Allegedly Snapped Thousands of Student Webcam Spy Pics

I’m not sure how anyone decided that spying on students while they are at home was a good idea. As crazy as this story is it does bring home how easily our privacy can be invaded. How easy is it for someone to get access into your life? How much information do you put out there voluntarily.

Buzz around national parties and their political leaders has reached some significant highs now the election campaign is in full swing.  Although largely driven by either news sites or tweets by the general public the parties themselves are also investing time and effort in using digital and social channels to get their manifestos across – see Labour interactive videos on You Tube, Conservative Podcasts and Lib Dems ‘Mash -up’ videos.

But what about the party representatives on a local level? I have seen door steppers treading our streets and leaflet distributors targeting busy Saturday shoppers but are they bypassing the online tools that their national contemporaries are trying so hard to introduce?

Marginal Seats

With marginal seats vital in one of the closest elections in years it could make more of a difference to drive and engage local buzz online.

At this stage with three weeks to go, the efforts must be as tactical and local as they are strategic and national.  Big national issues and policies being outlined in manifestos mean very little until you can interpret them on a personal and/or local level.

Lets not also forget that a ‘grass roots’ approach lends itself perfectly for social media too. Where else can you easily bring practical strangers together over a shared interest or rally advocates for a cause?

Picking on Crawley

Tweetmister have a neat tool  that enables you to see which MPs are using twitter in your region, here we can see that Lib Dem are ahead looking at both number of tweets and number of twitter accounts but this doesn’t go down to a constituency level which is where the big difference can be made.

Using one of the many useful poll tools online we can see that Crawley is one of the most contested constituencies (even more so since their Labour MP controversially resigned so close to the election).

Both the conservative MP, Henry Smith, and the new Labour MP, Chris Oxlade, are present online to some degree:

Henry Smith, Conservative MP, Crawley.

170 fans on facebook, last update 4 days ago, responding to questions from the public.  No twitter account or blog but has a video on You Tube that has received 62 views.

Chris Oxlade, Labour MP, Crawley.

622 fans on facebook, last update today,  having a dialogue with the public around a range of issues. 123 followers on twitter although with only 8 tweets its not at all active.

Both appear to have a basic presence and good to see they are having a dialogue with people who approach them rather than just using the platforms to push their own messages out but it does seem fairly limited compared to some of the national activity occuring.

Listening Locally

Could MPs of Crawley be doing more?

We know health is one of the areas of weakness for Crawley so we had a dig around to see where relevant communities and conversations are occurring for an MP to target.  Looking briefly we have found a few already where a relevant target audience can be found around health and well-being:

Some basic tips for local MPs to get started

1. Search for twitter users and facebook groups by location
2. Find out which local community clubs / organisations have online presence
3. Use google search and enter search strings like ‘health crawley’ and filter results by discussions or blogs
4. Spend half an hour each day listening to what all these people you have found are saying
5. Think about which of these people could be ‘useful’ to engage as advocates for different policies or ideas
6. Ask the community questions on your facebook page or as a hashtag on twitter around an issue you have discovered as important
7. Produce a video or podcast that takes the most relevant issues in the national manifesto and highlights what it will mean in reality for locals

Risk and Opportunities

Last weeks peak of online buzz occurred around the digital economy bill. With sites being shared online like this, local MPs can’t afford to hide even on the big issues.

Tom Watson is a local MP who has actively got involved with people online, standing very clearly for a key issue.   Gaming may not necessarily be top of the list of priorities for all of the residents in his West Bromwich constituency but he has the right approach to the social media space.

Many are saying that this election is to be won by ‘word of mouth’. Maybe a little more conversation locally could be the tipping point for those marginal seats?

3 of the best

U.K. to Regulate Social Network Marketing

An interesting challenge for the ASA, trying to manage the seemingly unmanageable internet. There are a lot of questions I have on how exactly this will work, in terms of constantly changing adverts and how far their jurisdiction allows them to regulate.

Facebook has certainly had its fair share of scammy advertising and one would hope this goes some way to stopping it! What I would hope for more is that the ASA see Social Media as not just something to regulate but also to enhance their complaints system.

Are they monitoring social networks to see if there are any complaints on adverts or do they just wait for the letters and emails? A tiny step in the right direction.

Ribbon Hero

Last week we looked at how gameplay and social structures could encourage better behaviour. Microsoft have added a social game to their Office Suite. I think this could be a great way to encourage people to become more efficient and make better looking documents. The interesting thing about Ribbon Hero is that it hooks into your Facebook so you can challenge your friends and compare your scores. Props to Microsoft

A little bit of politics

As the election looms the BBC will start covering how politicians are using the internet to enhance their campaigns. I don’t expect we will see anything of the level of Obama but it will be interesting to see how the major parties use social media and how much of an impact it really can have. Keep your eyes on the BBC tech blog.

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Infographic: Mega Shark

If you have seen the laughable Mega Shark vs Giant Octopus scene in which said shark takes down a commercial airline. You may be very amused and informed by this Mega Shark graphic .

Which Test Won

A neat website for UI people with real world tests on how you can alter your site to get the results you want.

Family see Jesus image in Marmite

The lord works in mysterious ways, some people love that and some people hate that…it’s a bit Marmite you could say. Divine intervention also occurred in our very own office!

Here at Qube we (obviously) believe in Social Media as a platform for change. Social media and the Internet are such important parts of our daily lives it makes sense for public officials to start using it as a way of making a positive difference to our country. With that in mind we thought we would start highlighting some of the best and worst uses of social media and the Internet in official communication on a weekly basis. With the election looming it seems now more than ever social media will be important for the political parties.

More of This

This week saw political figures respond to questions asked by social network users. Barak Obama spent half an hour answering a variety of questions from Youtube users. While he was only able to answer a few of the 11,696 questions asked it was great to see the president of the United States taking the time to respond directly to his citizens. The video has received almost half a million views and has over 9,000 comments. That shows a great level of discussion and influence with a smart piece of crowd sourcing.

Over in the UK Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg was taking part in a similar endeavor. Reddit users had been asked to submit questions for Nick and then vote up their most popular questions. Mr Clegg then answered these questions in a refreshingly under produced Youtube video. It was great to see a party leader taking the time to go into other communities and get involved in discussions.

David Cameron has also taken some time to answer user submitted questions. Although the Liberal Democrats approach of going into existing communities may be preferential to some, it is great to see the Tories taking this action (they also have a nice and slick system for submitting and voting for comments).

Why is this worthwhile? A couple of Youtube comments from Nick Cleggs Reddit video make it perfectly clear why.

The next step is for the parties to get involved in these comments on their own videos

Less of This

Labour have a bunch of “tools for your website” on their official site. Rather than focus on their own policies they seem to have taken the school boy approach of throwing insults. There are a series of “satirical” widgets that you can install on your site to show txt speak conversations from the Conservatives. Hardly the most thought provoking or conversation starting stuff. Instead of creating fake conversations for your site perhaps they should help voters engage in real conversations with the party?

Have a look at the offending item below and let us know what you think. How do you think the political parties should be using social media?