In Strategies for progressives on Twitter, Tracy Viselli and I talked about the importance of tools and techniques for flash actions on Twitter. Conservatives have been organizing longer and have the early lead, but I think progressives and bipartisans are starting to catch up.
PxFridays
PxFridays is a project being led by Kelley Graham to connect progressives on Twitter. It’s a simple idea: if you’re a progressive’er on Twitter, please tweet about what you’re working on, and include the #pxfridays hashtag. Hashtags help organize information on Twitter and also can be useful abbreviations. For example, here’s what I tweeted:
#pxfridays: i’m finishing up an article on #askpres and thinking about #CA10, #EFCA , and next steps for #p2 and #topprog
In English, #askpres stands for “Ask the President”, #CA10 is information about the special election for Ellen Tauscher’s seat, etc. It’s like a different langauge and takes some getting used to. The Twitter page on the #p2 (“progressives 2.0”) wiki has more information about hashtags.
Two weeks ago, 21 people took part; last week, it was 23.  So PxFriday’s off to a pretty good start. The information’s a useful snapshot — and it’s great to put faces to the names. Please get involved!
TweetLeft
You can see what others are tweeting about PxFridays on Chris Meserole’s TweetLeft. TweetLeft also lets you select other progressive, bipartisan, and non-partisan hashtags including #rebelleft, #bipart, #fem2, #woc, #efca and many more.  You can also browse the “merged feed” of all of them.
TweetLeft’s in its very early stages. The idea came up at a #p2 Twitter chat about a month ago and it’s been a spare-time project for Chris. Even so it’s remarkable how useful it is. The feel of the UI is very clean; stripping the http:// off the visual display of links makes a huge difference.  Being able to switch between hashtags so easily gives a feel almost like switching channels on the radio.
Tweetleft made a big difference in #p2’s work with #askpres and it’ll be equally valuable in a lot of other situations. Strongly strongly recommended.
#followfriday
Fridays on Twitter are also “Follow Fridays”, a tradition of peer-to-peer recommendations that’s been going on for a while.  It’s simple: tweet the names of some people you recommend and why. Micah Baldwin’s #FollowFriday: The Anatomy of a Twitter Trend has some great background and analysis and is well worth reading.*
#followfridays work well with other hashtags too. For example here’s a tweet from @seasonothebitch:
#followfriday #EFCA action: @price_laborecon @EFCANOW @matttbastard @myrnatheminx @jdp23
A combined search for #followfriday AND #efca makes it a lot easier for people interested in EFCA to be aware of the people and organizations involved. Tweetleft doesn’t support this functionality yet … I suspect it won’t take too long.
Putting it together
Chris, Kelley, and I (and hopefully others) are going to be talking about sites like the p2 wiki, TweetLeft, and PxFridays can complement each other. I’ve also been talking with Allyson Kapin and Jen Nedeau about ideas for doing more with the #women2follow hashtag. There are clearly a lot of synergies here.
Details TBD; stay tuned for more.
jon
* The excellent graphs were created using Twopular, a very useful site with information about hashtags that make it into the top 10 list. Thanks to @Micah for the info. He also pointed me to rrtrends for tracking hashtag information, which seems like a good tool as well.
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