The CllrTweeps website has been on the go for a fair old while (in Internet terms) now and was the first site of its type of councillors, councils and their residents. Â However, even when it was set up we were aware that the site would not last forever. Â This was not some metaphysical angst about the transience of existence, but a recognition of the reality of the internet and that realistically, one of two things will happen:
- Twitter would prove to be a passing fad, and a few months from now we’d find that no-one cared about councillors being on Twitter.
- Twitter would start to become mainstream, and in time no-one would care about a central directory of councillors.
It’s too early to tell, but it is starting to look like the latter. Â Increasingly councils are putting themselves on Twitter (we list council accounts on the relevant pages, but Liz Azyan has a more complete list which includes councils with no Twittering councillors on her blog) but yesterday we found the first examples of councils listing their councillor’s Twitter accounts.
First was Staffordshire Moorlands District Council who, we were flattered to discover, direct their residents to the relevant page on the CllrTweeps site from their councillor information page. Â Although residents may be a little disappointed only one councillor from that authority has started Tweeting.
The second was Cannock Chase District Council who list the Twitter accounts of their councillors directly on the individual councillor’s information page. So far there are only two; Cllr John Jillings and Cllr Darrell Mawle who Twitter as @JohnJillings and @CouncillorMawle respectively.
If Twitter becomes mainstream and keeps going - neither a sure-fire thing - then it’s likely councils will start listing their councillors’ Twitter accounts as naturally as they do their email or correspondence addresses. When that time comes, a directory like CllrTweeps becomes less relevant, just as no-one bothers collating councillors’ email addresses for a national site.
And while we’re looking at extra features like party or council streams, we’re painfully aware that this often replicates existing sites. To give an example, Jason Cobb, a politically interested resident in Lambeth, features a Lambeth Twitterstream, called the Lambeth Walk, on the homepage of his blog. While we’re passionate about keeping CllrTweeps in its position as the most comprehensive site of its type, we know we can’t match the passion individual people have for their areas, nor would we want to.
But while the day may come when councils routinely list their councillors’ Twitter accounts, and community websites have combined Twitter streams from their locally elected representatives, that day is probably still some time away - we mustn’t get carried away with Twitter, whatever a social media expert may say.
At the time of writing the site lists 252 councillors, and while this number is growing by the day, it’s still not many. Â Given that we include town and parish councillors it represents less than 0.0025% of the potential 100,000+ councillors. Â Even if we limited it only to ‘principal authorities’ we’re stuck on a measly 0.01% of 20,000+ councillors.
So there is still a place for CllrTweeps, and we’ll stay there as long as there is but - as Cannock Chase reminds us - sooner or later residents won’t need CllrTweeps, they’ll find their councillors on their council website.
2 Responses
I think services like CllrTweeps will continue to be relevant whether or not councils begin to list twitter details along side email addresses and phone numbers. However the audience of the site might change.
A while ago, people were asking questions like “wouldn’t it be good if we could contact our MPs easily through a website?” and “how can I find out how to contact my local MP?”. A group of people got together and set up WriteToThem.com/TheyWorkForYou.com and others. These services all rely on a central database of contact details for MPs. Other services such as FixMyStreet.com have also appeared which allows people to notify their council of problems. Again, this site needs a database of contact details for people to notify.
What if FixMyStreet could not only notify your council of a problem, but keep your local councillor informed of problems in his/her ward? What if someone wanted to put together a site to aggregate topics of discussion amongst councillors? These are just some examples, but they would all need a database of all contactable councillors.
Could CllrTweeps provide this data? The answer is most certainly yes!
My aim for this site is not only to launch some of the services people have been asking for, such as feeds of parties and councils, but to make the data open for other people to use. At this point, we make ourselves useful to not only the councillors and members of the public, but also developers who are looking for sources of data.
So to finish off, a question for other developers - if you had access to our data, what format would you want it in, and what would you use it for?
da best. Keep it going! Thank you