There’s going to be a lot of coverage around the Australian federal election in the coming four weeks. There’ll be political discussion, debate around the policies (or lack thereof) and viewpoints on the way that the politicians are using social media. But rather than inundate you with this information, I will just point out two interesting developments, and then skip over to my usual coverage!
- Matthew Gain over at Edelman has pulled together an app that analyses and ranks the twittering of various politicians. So far it seems that Malcolm Turnbull is way out in front. I wonder how reflective this will be of the final results – let’s check back in a few weeks!
- As a board member of Vibewire, the youth not for profit that helps young media professionals gain valuable real world experience, I am excited to see the launch of electionWIRE. A joint Google-Vibewire project, electionWIRE allows young people all over the country to report the election in their own words and in their own way. (I’ll write more on this fascinating project in the coming weeks.)
- Last year, Ray Wang surveyed 40 successful analysts covering the online industries (from enterprise to technology) and came up with Seven Tenets of Building a Star Analyst Firm. Interestingly, with a little tweaking, each of these can be applied to any form of team building – no matter whether you are running an accounting practice or creating a new agency.
- Gaurav Mishra asks one of the questions that is most often asked by the social media skeptics – what is more social: playing with your real friends or making friends with strangers you are playing with? There’s a video from the Social Gaming Summit and a summary of the key points. But what’s the answer? You’ll have to read the post to find out.
- If you’re in the mood for stories, take a look at Olivier Blanchard’s The Psychology of Failure (Pt 2). It’s a long post chock-full of lessons learned and challenges that sometimes are only resolved in unfortunate ways. After all, life can be grubby.
Very belated thank you comment for including the Election TweetLevel research here Gavin. Has been a lot of fun setting it up and analysing the behaviour of the politicians.
Making time to check out the ElectionWire work you are doing tonight. Looks interesting from the short glances I have given it.
I think the most interesting thing about the election has been the way that people are engaging in the social discussion of politics online. Shame there is nothing more than adwords buys from the political parties.
As to electionWIRE – it’s not my work. It’s the team at Vibewire. I just cheer from the sidelines!