The 88th General Assembly
has convened the 2012 fiscal session

Wednesday, April 29, 2009

Legislative twittering: Can you top 1,334 followers?

The Thicket has searched twitter.com for the most active state legislators across the country, and the most active seems to be Sen. Dan Patrick of Texas, who has 1,334 followers. Want to follow Arkansas legislators on the social networking site? Here are links with the number of followers, with the acknowledgment that many of these legislators have either just joined or use the site primarily to follow others:

Rep. Duncan Baird (R-Lowell) (178 followers)
Rep. Davy Carter (R-Cabot) (29 followers)
Rep. Jonathan Dismang (R-Beebe) (34 followers)
Rep. Steve Harrelson (D-Texarkana) (293 followers)
Sen. Johnny Key (R-Mountain Home) (22 followers)
Rep. Mark Martin (R-Prairie Grove) (164 followers)
Rep. Linda Tyler (D-Conway) (12 followers)
Speaker Robbie Wills (D-Conway) (315 followers)
Rep. Jon Woods (R-Springdale) (62 followers)

Even Attorney General Dustin McDaniel (292 followers) is tweeting. At this point, Facebook is the much more preferred site for Arkansas legislators. Sen. Shane Broadway has well over 2,000 friends on that site, and many of the legislators listed above are more active on Facebook than Twitter. There are applications now such as twitterfeed that will update several social networking sites simulataneously.