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Tag Archive for 'John Mercurio'

The Hotline’s Tweetometer

Before I started working for The Hotline (and before they had a web presence to speak of) the original Beltway tip sheet had a catch phrase: “The word on the street is ours.” This week it looks like they’re going back to the well as they roll out a new feature, because it is called:

Word on the Tweet is a logical extension of On Call’s sister publication and my former vocation, The Blogometer. When we started in the winter of 2005, the blogosphere had just recently gone mainstream, largely thanks to its impact on the 2004 presidential campaign. Here in the winter of 2009, it’s the Twitterverse which has only just hit the big time.

And this is an even easier call for Hotline to decide on covering: The Blogometer covers the blogosphere as an amateur/activist extension of the Beltway media, but no member of Congress has time to sit down and write a blog. Twitter is different: after all, no less a politician than the president of the United States is an admitted BlackBerry addict.

And where most members would formerly have staffers maintain their Twitter account — if they had one at all — more and more are following the lead of Texas Rep. John Culberson and actually tweeting themselves. This participation by actual sitting congresscritters could be a great deal more entertainment, as writer Evan McMorris-Santoro hints in this disclaimer:

Note: all tweets are reproduced exactly as they appeared, grammar/spelling warts and all.

Exactly as it should be. For the announcement video starring McMorris-Santoro and my old boss John Mercurio, click here: