This blog, I have concluded, exists mostly thanks to a combination of fortuitous circumstances 6 years ago that has seen me through to this, my 1461st post.

The main piece of good fortune was time. I was a (relatively) early adopter to the blogging medium. I knew the game before the game became mainstream. A year after this blog launched it was ranked 10th in Iain Dale’s blog rankings. Now it’s not even in the Top 100 at Total Politics.

Look at the traffic. Of the top 5 posts by numbers of readers in the past month, 3 (Jobs, Commission, Lingon) were not written this year, one (iPhone) relates to something that’s very tangential to my main subjects, and one (Nick Pisa) is current, but builds on old posts. By being early, and having some rudimentary ability to write and design, I was ahead of the game, and partially stayed at the front for a while. Once blogging became mainstream I’m nowhere, and it’s simply by being ranked highly in Google that keeps the site traffic trickling in.

While bloggers in Egypt or Tunisia are framed as vital dissidents against the regimes in question, the UK media’s go-to bloggers – people like Tim Montgomerie – are folks who have cleverly used blogging to build hybrid media organisations, something which I of course do not begrudge them. But the era of being able to carve out a niche as an amateur blogger in politics are very much over.

The same has happened on Twitter. I have just over 4000 followers, and the number inches up at a glacial pace. A few years ago I was one of the most followed UK political nerds on Twitter. Now I am nowhere. Even within that 4000 the level of engagement and response is low – I’m not sure Crowdbooster analyses all of my 10k tweets, but of the ones it does cover, I have only ever had 2 tweets that have been retweeted more than 30 times, and not a single tweet retweeted 40 times. My best ever RTs represent less than 1% of my followers.

To give a further example, this week I have attended two political events: IPPR on Euroscepticism, and Hansard Society on social media in politics. Despite the politician panellists at both events being active on Twitter, and the topics they presented being ones central to what I do, naturally @DAlexanderMP @douglascarswell @julianhuppert and @BaronessDeech have not followed me. Rather sadly I would not even expect them to, and indeed Carswell, Huppert and Deech follow only around 100 people each.

Far from being a great leveller, social media has instead lead to a slight change in the definition of our political and media elites. Apart from that small window of opportunity for the early adopters to gain a foothold, the rest of the time the game is as hierarchical as it ever was, the structures geared towards those that shout the loudest and with the best connections, not the people that actually might know the answers. Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose…

Sorry but I am really tired of this ‘debate’.

Throw as many tools and content at the problem and you are not going to solve it. The problem with EU communication is deep and structural. It is not a problem with communication per se.

When does a political body (or in fact any organisation or company) communicate well? It’s when their own future depends on it. When a politician will not be re-elected, a company will go bankrupt, a NGO will not achieve its campaign ends. That drives good quality communications.

The problem for the EU institutions is that the people doing the communications – officials in the Commission, Council and Parliament – are often too far away from this. Their own futures do not depend on how they communicate. Yes, there might be some fuzzy concern that citizens don’t like of trust the EU, but that touches very few people in Brussels personally. Many of the politicians in Brussels are too insulated from direct accountability as well.

The problem then relates to the structure of the institutions – get the democracy and accountability right and better communications will follow. Until that happens all we’re doing is messing around at the edges.

As a politician it was always a little more complicated, because in some way the person is the organisation, and (some) politicians have personal Facebook profiles too. Best practice was hence to create a page for a politician for contact with activists and distribution of news, and – if a politician wants it – to keep a personal profile for personal use (friends, family stuff etc.)

The difficulty is that few politicians I’ve ever worked with understand this distinction, and even when they do, the question of where personal matters end and professional stuff starts is never a simple one.

So along comes Facebook and proposes a new function, announced today: the ‘Subscribe’ button. This allows you to essentially ‘Follow’ a person, but the relationship is not reciprocal in the way adding someone as a friend is on Facebook. One subscribes to the other, but the other does not need to subscribe back. The blog entry announcing it even pitches to politicians:

The Subscribe button also lets you hear from interesting people you’re not friends with—like journalists, artists and political figures.

The devil might well be in the detail, as anyone with ‘Subscribers’ (this vocab is getting complicated) has to be conscious of who reads each and every status update by choosing its distribution when they write something – surely a recipe for people posting private stuff in public by accident.

Secondly, should any politician with a decent following on a Facebook Page (Cory Booker for example) convert those Page ‘Likes’ into ‘Subscribes’?

Third, what is the right thing to advocate to a wannabe politician now? Keep your profile and attract ‘Subscribers’? Or go the traditional way and open a page?

Strikes me that this new function is intrinsically not a bad idea, but I fear it’s going to cause further confusion in practice.

1. Freedom of speech
Nick Clegg pledged a return of British freedoms. Freedom of speech is a crucial part of this. Any effort to close down or censor the internet or social media is a restriction on the free speech of the population, and as such is dangerous. Remember that upwards of 30 million Brits (more than half the population) use social media. We do not want the UK emulating Belarus and China.

2. Social media is useful, but not vital, for emergency communications
Parallels have been drawn in today’s debate between the response to the riots and the 2005 terrorist attacks in London when access to mobile phone networks was restricted. In the latter this was so as to ensure emergency services could communicate with each other. No emergency service’s communications are dependent on any social media technology, and there is no evidence that net access needed to be restricted for this purpose, so there is no emergency case for closing social media sites.

3. Restricting social media deals with the symptom, not the cause
There is no way to stop people communicating within a community. If they want a riot they will find ways to do so. Networking via social media is the symptom of anger shown by people – social media is not the cause of the violence. People have always had ways to organise violence or protest, and they will find ways to do so with social media or without it.

4. Targeting any system(s) will not work
Even if BlackBerry Messenger had been closed during the violence in Tottenham (as local MP David Lammy advocated, wrongly in my view), other technologies could have been used instead. BlackBerry Messenger is not – strictly defined – social media anyway. It’s more akin to Skype or MSN Messenger. But the issue here is clear – if you shut one means of communication, another can be opened very swiftly. Anyone with a basic understanding of technology can see that.

5. Social media can be used to reassure a population, and to organise a cleanup
I used Twitter to check on the situation at home in Bow when I was in West London, and to plan a route to Kentish Town by bicycle to avoid any flash points. Other Twitter users were happy to help. Stella Creasy MP has done brilliant work networking with and reassuring the people of Walthamstow, while across London cleanups have been organised primarily via Twitter. Cutting off social media cuts off all of these tremendous solutions.

So then, David Cameron and the vast majority of backbenchers, it’s time to learn a few lessons about social media and technology in light of the riots!

Beyond that what do we actually know? Rather little, at least for sure. That’s indeed the position taken by Norwegian PM Jens Stoltenberg, who was calm and collected in a television statement (can’t find the video of it online), saying it was not known who or what was to blame, the priority was for everyone’s security, and people should remain calm. Spot on, and my good friend Bente Kalsnes who lives in Oslo agrees.

But what do you then get? 24 hour news channels start an endless stream of speculation about what may or may not have happened. As I’m in Cairo I’ve had an eye on Al Jazeera here, and they wheel out Justin Crump who blathers on about how ‘almost certainly’ this was an act of Al Qaeda terrorism, and how Islamic terrorists could view Norway as a means of pressuring other countries in NATO. In the meantime BBC’s Gordon Correra seems to be saying the same sort of thing, according to the BBC live text (I can’t watch BBC here, but I’m told BBC has not even shown Stoltenberg’s statement yet).

How about some people that know how Norwegian society works? Have been to Utøya to an event there? How can anyone fit a 1.85m high guy with blond hair doing the shooting into the theory that this is an islamic terrorist attack? That’s not to say this is not an islamic terrorist attack, but conversely we cannot say that it is either. We just don’t know yet! So why speculate?

In the meantime UK Foreign Secretary William Hague weighs in on Twitter:

Horrific attacks in Oslo - we condemn all acts of terrorism and will stand shoulder to shoulder with Norway in the face of such atrocities.

22.07.2011 17:26 via Twitter for iPhoneReplyRetweetFavorite

@WilliamJHague

William Hague

Do we even know that for sure? Did we know it 2 hours ago when Hague wrote it?

Anyway, as ever in circumstances like this I have turned to social media, asking Norwegian friends like @finnmyrstad and @benteka what he knows, checking via Facebook that Siri Holland, a friend in the youth branch of the Norwegian Labour Party is OK, following the minute-by-minute updates from @runebak (who I don’t know, but friends re-tweeted), and in my own incremental way building up a picture of what’s going on using the collective wisdom of the people I follow, and the people they trust. It’s a much more nuanced, thoughtful and multi-faceted picture.

[UPDATE - 2210]
The excellent @runehak tweets:

Nationen also writes police think its a local variant directed at the current political system. http://j.mp/o6QQSP #osloexpl #oslobomb #whys

22.07.2011 20:07 via TweetDeckReplyRetweetFavorite

@runehak

Rune Håkonsen

The link mentioned – to Nationen – is here. This is the Google Translate:

New York (AP): Police believe after the NTB know that ersamme man is behindboth attacks. They suspect that this is not terrorism, but a local variant aimed atthe existing political system. [my emphasis] The police should be familiar with the environmentman is associated.PST is now working with the Oslo police in the investigation of both incidents.

- We still do not know what weapons he has used, or whether her husband have operated alone in both events or one of a group, said national police chief SverreSponheim said.

No guarantee this is any more accurate than any other speculation, but it does cast doubt on those immediately blaming jihadist groups.

[UPDATE - 2305]
Jens Stoltenberg has just been live on BBC World News at a press conference. He has been a model of careful words and steely determination. There has been not a word of idle speculation about who the perpetrator(s) are – he does not know and hence will not be drawn. Excellent.

[UPDATE - 2321]
Partial volte-face from BBC’s Gordon Corera from BBC’s Live Text? (BST to CET explains time difference)

2211: Gordon Corera Security correspondent, BBC News During the day, after an initial focus on an al-Qaeda link, the possibility of domestic extremism increasingly came into focus. The choice of targets – government buildings and a political youth rally – suggested a possible political agenda rather than the mass casualty approach typically employed by al-Qaeda.

Maybe you should not have been so swift to jump to conclusions at the start?

"Over 50 political accounts deleted in Facebook purge" http://goo.gl/YmBWD

29.04.2011 16:48 via webReplyRetweetFavorite

@evgenymorozov

Evgeny Morozov

Look folks, this was a problem waiting to happen. Here’s why.

Take the story on the UCL Occupation blog:

There appears to be a purge of political Facebook groups taking place. Profiles are being deleted without warning or explanation.

Am I supposed to trust a rant that mixes up the Facebook terminology in the very first sentence? Therein – I think – is the root of the problem.

The accounts that have been purged are Profiles – i.e. organisations that behave as people on Facebook. The UCL Occupation one – still in existence for now – is still up, but a bunch of other have been deleted. Some more are listed here at Open Democracy.

In short there are three main ways to be on Facebook:

1. With a profile – intended for real people, with a name
2. With a group – a small to medium size group of people discussing something
3. With a page – ‘Like’ something to get news updates from it

As far as I can determine no groups or pages have been deleted, only profiles, and all the profiles were not individual people, they were being used by organisations. Not only is this stupid (as I’ve previously explained here) but it violates the Facebook terms of service. So no leg to stand on if one is deleted.

Now was the reaction of Facebook right? Probably not – the owners of the profiles could have been contacted, suggestions made to convert the accounts into Pages etc. Just deleting profiles generates a strong counter reaction. Someone undoubtedly informed Facebook of the breach, and got the accounts shut down. Facebook, as a company, has form for these sorts of things – it’s to hegemonic to care about individual users.

But – frankly – I have often done the same, and I’m sure many people have. When political opponents of mine have bee using profiles rather than pages I report them to Facebook. I of course don’t report accounts of organisations I agree with, and just send them a friendly message to warn them.

In conclusion, there are errors on both sides here. The accounts in question broke the terms, and Facebook behaved insensitively, but we should not have expected anything else. The lesson: if you do want to use this unpleasant, money making, American walled garden for your political protests, at least learn to use it properly before you start out!

[UPDATE - 1.5.2011] By the look of it my take on events was more or less correct.

[UPDATE - 2.5.2011] I’ve now found The Guardian’s take on the story, and it’s even more inaccurate than the initial UCL blog post. It’s not that complicated folks!

[UPDATE - 5.5.2011] I had not seen it before, but Facebook now even has a tool to make the conversion for you. So no excuse!

I’m often asked how I follow 2900 people on Twitter. You can’t read that much! Sorry you 2900, but I don’t read all your tweets. Nor does anyone who follows a lot of people.

So what do I read, and how?

First of all, life is too short to read old tweets. So anything written now, while I’m writing this blog entry, or you’re reading it, I won’t look at. Except mentions (tweets mentioning @jonworth) – I’ll read all of those, always.

Secondly, I don’t use twitter.com to manage my account. I use Tweetdeck for Chrome, although regular Tweetdeck or Hootsuite will do the job just as well. These are the only Twitter Clients I’ve come across that give a decent overview of Twitter lists, and also explain why Tweetdeck is a valuable firm just now. No-one using Twitter effectively and professionally is going to be using the regular Twitter website, it just does not offer adequate functionality.

Thirdly, group the people you follow into lists. There are practical guides about how to do this from Mashable and Twitter itself. But why should you do this?

Think of the things that matter to you. For me that’s UK Politics, EU Politics and how tech impacts politics. Depending on the time of day, or the day of the week, my interests will vary. If it’s a European Council in Brussels my focus will be on EU. If it’s budget day it will be the UK. If I’m looking for inspiration on web projects then it will be tech.

So think of your interests, and work out who the really interesting people are on Twitter in those areas, and make a list for each.

For example my techpolitics list has 34 members (you can see their tweets here), the UK list 66 and so on. The total on all my lists is a couple of hundred. Anyone I follow will be considered for a list, but not that many make it. You can also see that while 3300 people follow me, 238 have listed me – i.e. 238 people who have gone beyond the basics of Twitter are really paying attention.

Last but not least, get an overview of your lists in Tweetdeck or Hootsuite. This is shown in the screenshot above – you can display each list in a separate column, giving you an overview of what’s happening on all of your lists, whenever you want it. This is much better than the separate clicks you have to make in most Twitter clients, or at twitter.com. You can also make columns for Twitter searches, although that’s a topic for another post.

So – in short – work out your interests, make a list for each, add columns in Tweetdeck or Hootsuite, and enjoy a busy but manageable experience with Twitter!

Labour MEP for London Claude Moraes in today's @guardiannews on lack of Tory support for EU crime fighting agency http://bit.ly/eGHVhk

07.04.2011 10:44 via ÜberSocialReplyRetweetFavorite

@TheBrianDuggan

Brian Duggan

I followed the link to the letters page of The Guardian, and this is what I get:

Your report on the conviction of John Sweeney should be essential reading for some of my colleagues in the European parliament who have consistently argued against the very programme that brought this murderer to justice (Report, 4 April). Last year the Guardian reported that the UK requested Eurojust’s help in more cases than any other EU country. Yet time and again, the Conservatives and Ukip in Brussels have refused to support the organisation, a body set up to help the police work more effectively with their colleagues in other EU countries. Perhaps they don’t see the link between abstract agreements in Brussels and the reality of fighting crime.

Claude Moraes MEP

Labour’s European spokesperson on justice and home affairs

The link on the Guardian site leads here, not exactly informative about the processes behind the case. So how about Moraes’s website? That has just a copy-paste of the letter. His briefings page contains no information about Eurojust or this issue more widely. The link to his Twitter account from his website is broken.

So what do I learn from all of this? Well it shows my MEP is at least active – he’s writing to the newspapers. But I don’t actually learn anything. How are the Tories and UKIP blocking Eurojust? Does Labour, the EPLP, PES or S&D group have a proper policy? How should Europe-wide judicial cooperation work? Not a clue.

Now I can understand why a letter to a newspaper has to be short, but surely the website or Twitter account of a politician should be just the place to add that extra context?