One of the powerful things about video is how it can shine a light on the authentic.

If you really mean something it comes over and if you don’t that impression is painted too.

Here are two videos that paint this picture well.

Video 1: Ruben Neves

The first is Wolves player Ruben Neves who is recording a farewell video after signing for a Saudi Arabian club. He’s clearly emotional.

It’s the video of someone who really feels it.

Wolves are not my team. Far from it. As a Stoke City fan growing up in Stafford they were the enemy and still are. But I get the emotion in the voice. You don’t have to like football to get it.

As a supporter, I know that he’s cemented a place in his club’s folklore in what he did on the pitch and the way he left. That’s a rare thing.

Deconstructed

As a piece of filmmaking, it’s well put together. The opening shot is an identifying shot of the empty chair that works in tandem with the text ‘A message from…’. We cut to the emotional shot almost as a teaser. We cut back to the beginning of the statement. We know what’s coming and the video doesn’t disappoint.

There’s also cutaways to the good times such as a goal he scores. The strength of a cutaway is that you see it and you hear it. It’s doubly reinforced as well as being visually interesting.

It’s also on the Wolves club account so the club have also endorsed this message.

Video 2: Mason Mount

Compare this now to Mason Mount who controversially moved from Chelsea to Manchester United. It’s a video on his own instagram. There’s less polish. There must be sincerity there but it doesn’t come through.

As one person comments, it has the look of a hostage video.

It would also be wrong to try and force emotion. Fake tears are fake.

Maybe that’s because someone is not as comfortable in front of the camera and that’s okay. If that’s the case don’t put them in front of the camera.

When Neves left Wolves it feels like the end of a chapter and he’s going somewhere far away. When Mount leaves Chelsea to bitter rivals it feels like a betrayal to many fans.

A written statement would have been better.

Original source – The Dan Slee Blog » LOCAL SOCIAL: Is it time for a Local localgovcamp?

One of the powerful things about video is how it can shine a light on the authentic.

If you really mean something it comes over and if you don’t that impression is painted too.

Here are two videos that paint this picture well.

Video 1: Ruben Neves

The first is Wolves player Ruben Neves who is recording a farewell video after signing for a Saudi Arabian club. He’s clearly emotional.

It’s the video of someone who really feels it.

Wolves are not my team. Far from it. As a Stoke City fan growing up in Stafford they were the enemy and still are. But I get the emotion in the voice. You don’t have to like football to get it.

As a supporter, I know that he’s cemented a place in his club’s folklore in what he did on the pitch and the way he left. That’s a rare thing.

Deconstructed

As a piece of filmmaking, it’s well put together. The opening shot is an identifying shot of the empty chair that works in tandem with the text ‘A message from…’. We cut to the emotional shot almost as a teaser. We cut back to the beginning of the statement. We know what’s coming and the video doesn’t disappoint.

There’s also cutaways to the good times such as a goal he scores. The strength of a cutaway is that you see it and you hear it. It’s doubly reinforced as well as being visually interesting.

It’s also on the Wolves club account so the club have also endorsed this message.

Video 2: Mason Mount

Compare this now to Mason Mount who controversially moved from Chelsea to Manchester United. It’s a video on his own instagram. There’s less polish. There must be sincerity there but it doesn’t come through.

As one person comments, it has the look of a hostage video.

It would also be wrong to try and force emotion. Fake tears are fake.

Maybe that’s because someone is not as comfortable in front of the camera and that’s okay. If that’s the case don’t put them in front of the camera.

When Neves left Wolves it feels like the end of a chapter and he’s going somewhere far away. When Mount leaves Chelsea to bitter rivals it feels like a betrayal to many fans.

A written statement would have been better.

Original source – The Dan Slee Blog » LOCAL SOCIAL: Is it time for a Local localgovcamp?

Narrow pavements, potholes and obstructed paths can make access difficult for pedestrians at the best of times — but if you’re in an electric wheelchair, such issues can make journeys dangerous or even impossible.

That’s why Alistair Slade reports them on FixMyStreet. He knows he’s not the only one who might be forced into oncoming traffic because of overgrown hedges; or where obstructions designed to keep out traffic will also prevent him from getting any further. The same problems beset anyone on a mobility scooter or in a wheelchair.

Tree roots making the pavement surface uneven, or verges encroaching onto the walkway can bring a very real risk of his chair tipping over. And if a dropped kerb is missing or just too high, Alistair may well be unable to cross the road.

No drop kerb - photo by Alistair Slade
Tree roots making uneven path - photo by Alistair Slade
many potholes - photo by Alistair Sloane
Encroaching vegetation - photo by Alistair Slade
Uneven paving - photo by Alistair Slade
Tree roots making path uneven - photo by Alistair Slade

Some of the photos Alistair has included with his reports: click on each one to see it at a larger size. These may look like ordinary pathways… until you try to see them through the eyes of someone in an electric wheelchair.

Everyone should have equal access to pedestrian routes — in fact, this right is inscribed in the Equality Act of 2010, as we discovered when we spoke to the Heavy Metal Handcyclist in 2010.

And this FixMyStreet user’s local council must now be much better informed about such barriers to access. Alistair, who was once Deputy Mayor, makes regular reports, generally attaching a photograph to clearly convey what the  the world looks like from the seat of a wheelchair.

His most notable success was the removal of anti-cycling bars that were too close for electric wheelchairs to get through — but he continues to report all the issues he discovers, making his little patch of the world safer for every type of traveller.

We hope that others will do the same: after all, wheelchair users shouldn’t have to do all the hard work needed to ensure they can get around. If you see an issue that makes access difficult, hop onto FixMyStreet and get it reported. Your local wheelchair users will be glad!

Banner image: Markus Spiske; all other photos by Alistair Slade.

Original source – mySociety

We’re in the process of creating a new organisational design and operating model that will better reflect and allow us to deliver on the ambitions of Our Plan (which I have written about here and you can read here).

We’re at an exciting but slightly frustrating point in the work where we have just completed the leadership design which describes – at a very high level – the future shape of the organisation and have got the first part of that in place – the frustration coming from feeling ready to go but without the people all there. We are in the process of recruiting to these roles so if you think this all sounds the right kind of interesting then do get in touch.

This means that the new leadership team will be looking at the design for their part of the organisation in a distributed process that we will guide and coordinate from a new function we are calling ‘people and change’ which brings together all of the ingredients of system change into one place. More on that as it develops.

The new design is going to have a few organisational shifts that we think better reflect what an organisation today – whether or not its a public sector one – needs to be. I don’t think any of these are unique to us – but I think the combination and the active use of our principles to get there probably is unusual.

The organisational design is formed around two axis:

  • Services: designed around the principles of good services and grouped around audience/customer
  • Capabilities: skills and knowledge needed across the organisation

These are then in service of two other design elements:

  • Capabilities / services connect in the delivery of our missions which is expect to be largely drawing on multi disciplinary teams
  • Our principles weave across and through everything creating (we hope) consistency about how we do things

We have not done a big piece on culture and values – but our work on Our Plan has defined some rules of engagement and the principles are a way of expressing ‘how we do things round here’ which is as good a description of culture as anything else (more here on my fear of laminated value lists). The principles are:

  • Resilient rather than efficient – I have written more about this here but in short – in an quickly shifting context your organisation and your people need enough head room to be able to adapt for the changing circumstances
  • Participative rather than top down which means giving people voice and agency
  • Adaptive rather than linear, with the ability to experiment and learn, building in capacity for change as a norm rather than a stop/start

I’m going to write a bit about each of these over the next few months and how they are intended to work together, but going back to the organisational design, the main big shifts alongside the principles are:

  1. We are creating a design which leans heavily on matrix working and multidisciplinary teams – including for core functions like legal and finance. We are working through the detail of this but the ambition is that all staff are clear on what services they support and which missions they are working on but also what professional families (or capabilities) they are part of. We think this will both be more cost effective but more importantly reflect our principles more effectively that a more traditional top down design which we have at the moment
  2. We want to make sure that we are putting our frontline services at the heart of what we do – and that includes bringing them close to strategy development and delivery
  3. We are assuming both that we will want to make extensive and creative use of digital technologies and also that we can’t afford – and don’t want – a large standalone digital team. We are therefore going to embed digital skills in a large range of job descriptions and have a significant upskilling programme over the next 2-3 years with the aim of making skills like user journey mapping or initial discovery work ubiquitous.
  4. We want to make a step change in our response to the climate emergency and so we are going to treat sustainability also as a capability which will cut horizontally across the organisation with a significant community of practice (as with our digital skills) to support our ambition here.

This design will rely on us committing as a whole to making multidisciplinary working work at scale. This is not a small ask of the organisation and something I have written about here before in the context of thinking about matrix working in different contexts.

This is very much a design born of a belief that we need to evolve our organisation thoughtfully but at pace because the challenges and opportunities we face mean we need to work differently -what has been encouraging in the work is that we are all starting to see a common approach emerging.

Its also a design born of complexity – as a shared service with two political administrations to serve we need to be good at looking in managing and fulfilling competing priorities and ambitions while losing our focus on frontline delivery.

We recently said goodbye to a much loved colleague who is retiring after being with the councils for other 30 years. I have to say I am a bit in awe of someone who has put in that kind of public service. We were talking, at the end of our election count which was very appropriately the last thing on his work todo list, about the vast change he has seen in the sector and that when it comes down to it the things that really matter are kindness and connection – it was a really important reminder about the need to put the human stuff right at the heart of things and I’ll be taking that thought into the next phase of our design work.

Original source – Catherine Howe

We’re in the process of creating a new organisational design and operating model that will better reflect and allow us to deliver on the ambitions of Our Plan (which I have written about here and you can read here).

We’re at an exciting but slightly frustrating point in the work where we have just completed the leadership design which describes – at a very high level – the future shape of the organisation and have got the first part of that in place – the frustration coming from feeling ready to go but without the people all there. We are in the process of recruiting to these roles so if you think this all sounds the right kind of interesting then do get in touch.

This means that the new leadership team will be looking at the design for their part of the organisation in a distributed process that we will guide and coordinate from a new function we are calling ‘people and change’ which brings together all of the ingredients of system change into one place. More on that as it develops.

The new design is going to have a few organisational shifts that we think better reflect what an organisation today – whether or not its a public sector one – needs to be. I don’t think any of these are unique to us – but I think the combination and the active use of our principles to get there probably is unusual.

The organisational design is formed around two axis:

  • Services: designed around the principles of good services and grouped around audience/customer
  • Capabilities: skills and knowledge needed across the organisation

These are then in service of two other design elements:

  • Capabilities / services connect in the delivery of our missions which is expect to be largely drawing on multi disciplinary teams
  • Our principles weave across and through everything creating (we hope) consistency about how we do things

We have not done a big piece on culture and values – but our work on Our Plan has defined some rules of engagement and the principles are a way of expressing ‘how we do things round here’ which is as good a description of culture as anything else (more here on my fear of laminated value lists). The principles are:

  • Resilient rather than efficient – I have written more about this here but in short – in an quickly shifting context your organisation and your people need enough head room to be able to adapt for the changing circumstances
  • Participative rather than top down which means giving people voice and agency
  • Adaptive rather than linear, with the ability to experiment and learn, building in capacity for change as a norm rather than a stop/start

I’m going to write a bit about each of these over the next few months and how they are intended to work together, but going back to the organisational design, the main big shifts alongside the principles are:

  1. We are creating a design which leans heavily on matrix working and multidisciplinary teams – including for core functions like legal and finance. We are working through the detail of this but the ambition is that all staff are clear on what services they support and which missions they are working on but also what professional families (or capabilities) they are part of. We think this will both be more cost effective but more importantly reflect our principles more effectively that a more traditional top down design which we have at the moment
  2. We want to make sure that we are putting our frontline services at the heart of what we do – and that includes bringing them close to strategy development and delivery
  3. We are assuming both that we will want to make extensive and creative use of digital technologies and also that we can’t afford – and don’t want – a large standalone digital team. We are therefore going to embed digital skills in a large range of job descriptions and have a significant upskilling programme over the next 2-3 years with the aim of making skills like user journey mapping or initial discovery work ubiquitous.
  4. We want to make a step change in our response to the climate emergency and so we are going to treat sustainability also as a capability which will cut horizontally across the organisation with a significant community of practice (as with our digital skills) to support our ambition here.

This design will rely on us committing as a whole to making multidisciplinary working work at scale. This is not a small ask of the organisation and something I have written about here before in the context of thinking about matrix working in different contexts.

This is very much a design born of a belief that we need to evolve our organisation thoughtfully but at pace because the challenges and opportunities we face mean we need to work differently -what has been encouraging in the work is that we are all starting to see a common approach emerging.

Its also a design born of complexity – as a shared service with two political administrations to serve we need to be good at looking in managing and fulfilling competing priorities and ambitions while losing our focus on frontline delivery.

We recently said goodbye to a much loved colleague who is retiring after being with the councils for other 30 years. I have to say I am a bit in awe of someone who has put in that kind of public service. We were talking, at the end of our election count which was very appropriately the last thing on his work todo list, about the vast change he has seen in the sector and that when it comes down to it the things that really matter are kindness and connection – it was a really important reminder about the need to put the human stuff right at the heart of things and I’ll be taking that thought into the next phase of our design work.

Original source – Catherine Howe

This blog post is part of our Repowering Democracy series. This year we will be publishing a series of short pieces of writing from our staff, and external contributors who are thinking about how our democracy works and are at the frontlines of trying to improve it. Learn more about this series.


We’re thinking about the future of TheyWorkForYou, and we want to ground our plans in an understanding of how it is currently used and the impact it has had.

At a very practical level, it is much easier to make small changes than big ones — but small changes don’t have to have small effects. By leaning into how people are using the site, we can find ways of better supporting what people are already trying to do.

TheyWorkForYou has been politically (and culturally) influential. The way in which MPs and parties conduct themselves has changed in reaction to the service: next week we’ll have a guest post covering this in more detail. A throwaway shot in 2018’s TV thriller The Bodyguard, where a character quickly scans a politician’s voting record, shows how the idea of TheyWorkForYou has become a part of the UK’s political shorthand (with many arguments about whether this is a good or a bad thing, that we’ll come back to in this series).

That said, until recently we had no solid data as to how widely known the service is. In late 2021, Opinium gave us a set of free questions for a nationally representative poll. We used one of these to understand more about people’s awareness and usage of mySociety websites. We found that, out of all mySociety’s services, TheyWorkForYour was the one most people knew about. The poll found that one in three UK adults have heard of the site, and one in five have visited the site.

One of the biggest obstacles to successful civic tech isn’t having a good idea for a digital service, but successfully getting more than a handful of people to use it. TheyWorkForYou, with 20 years of history behind it, has crossed that hurdle. Improving and refining TheyWorkForYou is potentially a much more impactful thing to do than launching new services, but the funding environment for civic tech means there is far more money available for new projects than for steady payoffs from established work. This is a key issue we need to navigate, balancing short-term survival with a commitment to doing the things that will have the biggest positive impact.

Never heard of TheyWorkForYou 69%, have heard of it 32%, have visited/used 20%

 


Repowering Democracy

Subscribe to our Repowering Democracy: our weekly newsletter on democracy and technology


Parliamentary monitoring: a slow-burn success story

A key unique feature of TheyWorkForYou is the email alerts service. We send daily emails to subscribers about the activity of their chosen MPs or Lords, or when phrases that they are interested in are used in debates or written questions/answers. On average, this means we send around 400,000 emails a month. People mostly use alerts to keep up with their own MP’s parliamentary activity, but the keyword search also means that this service  is a powerful free parliamentary monitoring tool. Alerts are used by a range of public, private and charitable sector organisations to track specific issues and keywords in Parliament.

In 2021, we ran a survey on users of alerts and found that while the majority (84%) were citizen users, a sizable proportion (16%) were using it in a professional context. Focusing on this group for a follow-up survey in 2022, we got more details of the value that charities and campaigners get from TheyWorkForYou, but we also found that the alerts are in use by people working in Parliament and government departments, improving the flow of information inside these central institutions.

These professional users were also interested in different elements of the site than citizen users, being slightly more focused on written answers and statements (as these can be the best statements of current policy), and having much less interest in voting records.   A 2016 GovLab report estimated an economic benefit of TheyWorkForYou, on time saved alone, of up to £70 million a  year to the third sector.  As a free service, it provides an important alternative to political intelligence organisations and helps level the playing field for civil society to engage with parliamentarians and decision-makers.

There is real potential here to build on something that’s going well. We can better reflect, in the way the site works, and in the work we do around it, that a key way we have impact is via intermediaries, and making Parliament far more accessible to a range of charities and organisations. The technical side works well, but we could help organisations make the most use of this feature.

Professional users are mostly in public or charitable sector jobs
VOtes are seen as more useful by citizens than professionals


Subscribe to Repowering Democracy


During elections, people want different things from TheyWorkForYou

For the last 10 years, TheyWorkForYou has generally had over six million page views each year. In 2021 there were 7.8 million page views, and there were 13 million in the last election year.  In each of the last five years, there have been a million views of either the summary or voting record pages of MPs. Information on these pages also travels far further than to these direct users, as it is amplified by journalists or social media.

For the 2019 election, there was a clear increase in both overall traffic, but also in the proportion of people looking at the voting records pages. There were many views of the profiles of a small number of MPs (mostly party leaders) rather than views being evenly distributed among people looking at local MPs.

TheyWorkForYou Page views by year, showing a spike in 2019 for the election
Shows that generally there were more views of the summayr apge, until 2010 - when voting records almost reached parity

This shift towards more and more views of just the voting records pages reflected a change in the way people arrived at the site. The pattern of people entering a postcode at theyworkforyou.com, arriving at a summary page (with party comparisons), before maybe moving onto more detailed individual voting policies was becoming less common. More users were coming to the site via search engines or social media, and missing parts of the information we presented. As a result, we changed the way we displayed information, moving more of the important context from the party comparison to the voting records page.

But when the reason people are using the site changes, it’s a good time to consider how the information can best be presented. TheyWorkForYou in its design, is very focused on what happens in Parliament between elections, but the information it holds is obviously very relevant during an election. Steering into that, we could follow hints about what people want to know about (party leaders, and more widely, parties) and create new views on the information we hold, that reflect actions taken by a party over a parliamentary term. Here an existing usage suggests a different approach that could be useful to voters, that we are uniquely well placed to deliver, but which would be a substantial change in how we think about and present information.


Subscribe to Repowering Democracy


Purposeful incremental change

TheyWorkForYou needs more than just code and servers to keep on serving the people of the UK well. Playing the biggest role we can in informing people over the next twenty years will require careful stewardship to support what works, while adapting to new problems and opportunities.

As a long-running service, the site has picked up features that are sometimes useful, but sometimes outlive their purpose or the resources that are available to maintain them. Sometimes we have turned parts off. The core challenge of project-based funding is that it can only indirectly support “doing what’s already working”, and each additional project and feature adds long term maintenance costs. This is why it’s important that, while looking for opportunities to make improvements to the site, we need to make sure that our plans still fit into a coherent idea of what TheyWorkForYou is for – so all the parts of the site are still working together in a way that makes sense in the long run.



If you’d like to see us extending our work in democracy further, please consider making a contribution.

Donate now


Image: Maksim Shutov

 

Original source – mySociety

We’ve recently published a report on fragmented data and local councils’ climate action. Download it here.

At all levels of government, and across the UK, there is growing recognition of the importance of local government in achieving the UK’s climate commitments. From this, there is a growing need to understand the impact of the interventions taking place at a local authority level, and as such, there are growing calls from central government and civil society for more climate data publishing. 

We recognise that these calls for more data do not always take into account the resources needed from within authorities to prepare this data, nor how make the data useful to the authorities that published it in the first place.

More data publishing makes the climate data ecosystem richer, but smarter data publishing makes it more useful. If we replicate the history of previous central mandates to publish information, we will repeat mistakes that found local authorities using limited resources to put out data in ways that are far too costly to bring together and build upon.

We call this problem fragmented public data, and believe that a little bit more coordination and central support can supercharge the value of the data that local government produces. We need better tools and a better understanding of the skills and resources available to council staff. A realistic analysis of resource limitations of local government, and working with council staff who produce the data, will create more useful results, than a ‘best practice’ that requires obstructively high levels of technical skill. 

Central government has a role in providing more than an edict to publish: it must offer the support and resources to facilitate cooperation and publication of data spread over hundreds of local authorities. Net zero data publication does not have to be a burden. Together, civil society, central and local governments can come together to create a data ecosystem that is greater than the sum of its parts.  To build that ecosystem, we propose the following key principles:

  • A collaborative (but compulsory) data standard to agree the data and format that is expected.
  • A central repository of the location of the published data, which is kept up to date with new releases of data.
  • Support from a data convener to make publication simple – such as, through validation and publication tools, coordinating data submissions, and technical support.

Take action


Sign up for updates on mySociety’s climate work

Subscribe to our monthly newsletter and be the first to know about our climate events, tools and opportunities.

Original source – mySociety

Around one third of the UK’s emissions are within the power or influence of local authorities. Every local authority across the UK must be taking action to tackle climate change, in order for the UK to reach its 2050 net zero goal, and for local authorities themselves to reach their own net zero targets. 

mySociety builds services that support local authorities and their communities in their climate action planning. Through tools like the Climate Action Plan Explorer (CAPE) and our work on Climate Scorecards, we bring together local authority climate plans from across the country to make knowledge sharing easier, and the information more accessible. We know that council officers already use CAPE when seeking out best practice in different policy areas, but in order to improve these tools we need more data, and for that data to be published in an open format. That way, we can build and combine the data to make it more accessible, and more useful, for everyone. 

The data we need

  1. To understand local authority emissions: structured data of council’s scope 1-3  emissions
  2. To understand the effect on the area: Broader data about the local authority’s influence and activities in their wider local area
  3. To understand development, setbacks and changes: Context and reflections from the public body on their own progress and future plans

Running through this, this information needs to be published in a way that avoids the problem of public fragmented data, to unlock the most value from publishing this data. 

Understanding local authority emissions

84% of councils have a commitment to bring their own emissions, or those of their area, to net zero by a certain date. To this, it’s essential for public bodies to publish structured data of their scope 1-3 emissions.

These scope 1 (direct operational), scope 2 (indirect from supplied electricity & heat) and scope 3 (supply chain & other indirect) emissions should be broken down by source and by year, from a baseline year. Reporting templates for this are already in use for local authorities in Scotland and Wales.

Understanding and sharing local authorities impact on their area

In addition to scope 1-3 emissions, the ‘one third’ figure above draws on the fact that local authorities have considerable influence over their wider local area. To help build a more detailed picture of the work taking place across local authority areas, we need structured data covering:

  • Organisational plans and targets relevant to climate change, progress against these, and plans for future progress. These plans and targets are generated internally by the local authority or public body, but should capture the work they are doing internally and externally to support their wider community. For example, Aberdeen City Council’s recent submission using the Scottish Framework highlighted their Housing Strategy which included energy efficiency measures for privately owned, privately rented, and social housing.
  • Details of carbon saving projects across the local area. These will be unique to the reporting body, but will again illustrate what is taking place across that authority’s local area, and may provide inspiration and opportunity for other public bodies. In the Scottish template, authorities are asked to provide structured data about all carbon savings from projects, and  the top 10 carbon reduction projects to be carried out by the body in the report year.
  • Risk assessments and action plans for climate adaptation. These help to build a picture of the planning across the local area, and sharing this will help councils facing similar challenges to enhance their own planning. 

Progress tracking 

In order to provide the most useful data and tools, we also need to know more about how  local authorities reflect on their own progress. In these instances, free text which we can semantically search, is often most helpful. We need data around:

  • Personnel, systems & processes to manage climate monitoring and reporting. This helps us to understand who is doing the work, and how resource allocation happens. 
  • Progress since the last reporting period, and key areas of focus for the period ahead. This gives a vital sense of context and perspective from inside the reporting body, and helps situate the scale of work undertaken against work yet to be done.

Publishing data usefully

Requirements to publish data put extra costs on public authorities. As such, we need to make sure that this is done in a way that the data is most useful and accessible.

Fragmented public data is a problem that happens when many organisations are required to publish the same data, but not to a common standard or in a common location. With The Centre for Public Data, mySociety has published recommendations on unlocking the value of fragmented public data.  We recommend: 

  1. A collaborative (but required) data standard to agree the data and format that is expected. 
  2. An online central repository of the location of the published data, so that data users can find it easily.
  3. Support from the data convener to make publication simple and effective.

This applies to information directly about climate data, but is also a useful requirement for any new requirement to publish. For instance, while both EPC ratings and datasets of council assets are required to be published, in practice the lack of a coordinated publishing approach for assets data means this data cannot be combined to understand energy efficiency of council properties across the country. 

Take action

This is an evolving document and we want your feedback! Get in touch.


Sign up for updates on mySociety’s climate work

Subscribe to our monthly newsletter and be the first to know about our climate events, tools and opportunities.

Header image: Jason Blackeye on Unsplash

Original source – mySociety

There’s been talk of a Twitter replacement for so long now it feels like an over-spun line from a tired parent. 

Just keep waiting, it’ll soon be here. Not long now.

From just round the next corner, it feels as though it’s finally here.

First, Twitter put a cap on the amount of content people could see and announced plans to put the useful Tweetdeck tool behind a paywall.

Second, Meta announced their long awaited Twitter rival they’re calling Threads.

Surely, Threads is the answer, right?

If you’re hoping for this as an outcome, it won’t. But it won’t be good news for Twitter.

Here’s why.

What Threads will be 

News is sketchy but the low down has been that will look a lot like Twitter, or should I say, old Twitter, and it’ll be linked to Instagram. 

It’ll also be free, Meta say, and there will be no limit on posts that can be read. Because it hooks into an existing channel there’s no need to start on the bottom rung with zero followers. That’s going to be a powerful incentive to organisations that have spent time building an existing following.  

In addition, the benefit of this is that people can escape the undiluted craziness of the Elon Musk era with a platform that’s not safe to use, is rolling back on safety measures and in short has become something of a weird pub fight. 

Stephen Fry was broadly correct in 2016 when he called Twitter ‘a secret bathing pool in a magical glade that had become stagnant.’ 

Threads isn’t the silver bullet

Is Threads worth looking at? Absolutely. 

The tempting thing is to hope that Threads will be an easy like-for-like swap. All of your Twitter followers will magically reappear on Instagram. Bingo. I don’t think that’s going to happen.

It didn’t happen with Mastodon, TruthSocial or BlueSky. Even with the advantage of being connected to Instagram I don’t think it’ll happen here to the same extent. It replicates an existing network rather than builds a whole new one. 

For the UK, this means that the prime Threads via Instagram audience is potentially under 30.

Ofcom data shows 91 per cent of 13 to 24-year-olds use Instagram and 82 per cent of 25 to 34-year-olds. Almost two thirds of 35 to 44-year-olds use the platform, too.

Every single age demographic has Instagram used more than Twitter in all age groups except over 65s.

On the face of it, it’s a smart move to relocate those text-based messages to the ‘Gram. But hold on a second. Go and look at your Instagram insights. That’s your actual audience.

In practice, if you look at your corporate Instagram insights you may see a different group of people staring back at you. What that won’t be is a reflection of the whole of the audience that you’re looking to serve. 

An aside on the changing nature of Twitter

Here’s one unscientific example of the changing nature of Twitter from my own experience. In 2009, England played Australia in the 1st Test of the Ashes. Their last two batsmen Jimmy Anderson and Monty Panesar had to survive 88 balls to scrape a draw at Cardiff. I followed the bulk of that on Twitter from the passenger seat of the family car with my wife driving and five-year-old son in the back.

Following on Twitter meant I could see every ball, the joy of the English reaction and the despair from Down Under.  

On Sunday, I also followed an Ashes Test. This time I did it on the BBC Sport app without thinking the decision through. Why? Because that was the place I headed too without thinking knowing it would give me the best experience. It was only on reflection that it wasn’t Twitter.

Everyone who has loved Twitter on any level will have a different experience.  

What the demise of Twitter and the launch of Threads means for emergencies

There’s no doubt Twitter has been a powerful tool to use in an emergency. 

When an incident happened, people headed to Twitter and saw the relevant organisation providing real time updates. 

The riots of 2011 shaped so much of the last 15-years for public sector Twitter. The Government of the day, you may recall, wanted to haul Facebook, Twitter and RIM the makers of the BlackBerry in for a grilling. They also wanted to ban Twitter and Facebook in an emergency. Saner voices prevailed when it emerged putting your own content there as a trusted voice was the route.

In truth, posting to Twitter in an emergency was the last important reason for having a public sector Twitter account. With the limit on tweets and the stripping of blue ticks from organisations that last reason has been eroded. 

Will Threads be a route to communicate in an emergency? Maybe. But I don’t think it’s a like-for-like and it shouldn’t be the only route.

How to communicate in an emergency post-Twitter

The route to communicate in an emergency is already with us. There is already a complex ecosystem of platforms, tools and channels. In the UK, as a population we tend to use five or six platforms. And there’s email.

For me the communicating in an emergency is creating sharable date-stamped content on a range of different platforms. Why date-stamped? Because the algorithms may not show the update for several days by which time the incident has moved on. Showing that the update is 10am on June 3 2023 builds in obsolescence.

The answer may be to post the same message to the corporate Facebook page, a WhatsApp community channel, Threads, email and he website. Yes, this is more work. 

What communicating in 2023 is resolutely not is trying to drive traffic to a website. Platforms penalise links. To reach people, you need to put the text of the update onto each platform rather than link back to the website. By all means update your website too. Just don’t think that people will navigate to it from Facebook, Twitter or Threads for that matter.    

Can you invest time in building an email list for people in an area prone to flooding? Of course you can but it’ll take time. Email is an important channel.  

Journalists and Twitter

Journos have loved Twitter for years. Its influence far outwerighs its audience largely because journalists were there for the breaking news. Not only that but the decision makers could make an announcement in 140 characters without having the fuss of organising a press conference. Or answer questions.

There may be alternative ways to message reporters day-to-day and Threads could be a useful place to point journos to in an emergency.

Twitter won’t disappear overnight 

Before Facebook there was MySpace. In 2008, it was the largest show in town and pulling in huge numbers. A series of wrong turns led it into decline. It still exists as a platform but its been a good decade since it was big enough for Ofcom to count it as a channel in the UK.  

Twitter will do the same. It’ll decline. It’ll find new direction. It may even have new leadership. History tells us that once decline sets in that’s it. It’s all a question of time.

You absolutely need to make a social media review

What about the other days of the year when you are looking to reach people with a shopping list of tailored messages? 

The answer has to be look to run a social media review on yourself to freshen up your position. I’ve blogged about this before. Much social media architecture was developed in 2010. Time has moved on. Those people have left.

Have a fresh look. 

The simple Janet and John of a social media review is to look at your audience, your current channels, UK data around who is using what in 2023 and you’ll start to see the patterns emerge.  

Bottom line… educate the client

The line I come back to again and again is to educate the client. This is the chief executive, the middle manager, the person you work with to communicate. If you’re having trouble keeping pace spare a thought for them.

Original source – The Dan Slee Blog » LOCAL SOCIAL: Is it time for a Local localgovcamp?

There’s been talk of a Twitter replacement for so long now it feels like an over-spun line from a tired parent. 

Just keep waiting, it’ll soon be here. Not long now.

From just round the next corner, it feels as though it’s finally here.

First, Twitter put a cap on the amount of content people could see and announced plans to put the useful Tweetdeck tool behind a paywall.

Second, Meta announced their long awaited Twitter rival they’re calling Threads.

Surely, Threads is the answer, right?

If you’re hoping for this as an outcome, it won’t. But it won’t be good news for Twitter.

Here’s why.

What Threads will be 

News is sketchy but the low down has been that will look a lot like Twitter, or should I say, old Twitter, and it’ll be linked to Instagram. 

It’ll also be free, Meta say, and there will be no limit on posts that can be read. Because it hooks into an existing channel there’s no need to start on the bottom rung with zero followers. That’s going to be a powerful incentive to organisations that have spent time building an existing following.  

In addition, the benefit of this is that people can escape the undiluted craziness of the Elon Musk era with a platform that’s not safe to use, is rolling back on safety measures and in short has become something of a weird pub fight. 

Stephen Fry was broadly correct in 2016 when he called Twitter ‘a secret bathing pool in a magical glade that had become stagnant.’ 

Threads isn’t the silver bullet

Is Threads worth looking at? Absolutely. 

The tempting thing is to hope that Threads will be an easy like-for-like swap. All of your Twitter followers will magically reappear on Instagram. Bingo. I don’t think that’s going to happen.

It didn’t happen with Mastodon, TruthSocial or BlueSky. Even with the advantage of being connected to Instagram I don’t think it’ll happen here to the same extent. It replicates an existing network rather than builds a whole new one. 

For the UK, this means that the prime Threads via Instagram audience is potentially under 30.

Ofcom data shows 91 per cent of 13 to 24-year-olds use Instagram and 82 per cent of 25 to 34-year-olds. Almost two thirds of 35 to 44-year-olds use the platform, too.

Every single age demographic has Instagram used more than Twitter in all age groups except over 65s.

On the face of it, it’s a smart move to relocate those text-based messages to the ‘Gram. But hold on a second. Go and look at your Instagram insights. That’s your actual audience.

In practice, if you look at your corporate Instagram insights you may see a different group of people staring back at you. What that won’t be is a reflection of the whole of the audience that you’re looking to serve. 

An aside on the changing nature of Twitter

Here’s one unscientific example of the changing nature of Twitter from my own experience. In 2009, England played Australia in the 1st Test of the Ashes. Their last two batsmen Jimmy Anderson and Monty Panesar had to survive 88 balls to scrape a draw at Cardiff. I followed the bulk of that on Twitter from the passenger seat of the family car with my wife driving and five-year-old son in the back.

Following on Twitter meant I could see every ball, the joy of the English reaction and the despair from Down Under.  

On Sunday, I also followed an Ashes Test. This time I did it on the BBC Sport app without thinking the decision through. Why? Because that was the place I headed too without thinking knowing it would give me the best experience. It was only on reflection that it wasn’t Twitter.

Everyone who has loved Twitter on any level will have a different experience.  

What the demise of Twitter and the launch of Threads means for emergencies

There’s no doubt Twitter has been a powerful tool to use in an emergency. 

When an incident happened, people headed to Twitter and saw the relevant organisation providing real time updates. 

The riots of 2011 shaped so much of the last 15-years for public sector Twitter. The Government of the day, you may recall, wanted to haul Facebook, Twitter and RIM the makers of the BlackBerry in for a grilling. They also wanted to ban Twitter and Facebook in an emergency. Saner voices prevailed when it emerged putting your own content there as a trusted voice was the route.

In truth, posting to Twitter in an emergency was the last important reason for having a public sector Twitter account. With the limit on tweets and the stripping of blue ticks from organisations that last reason has been eroded. 

Will Threads be a route to communicate in an emergency? Maybe. But I don’t think it’s a like-for-like and it shouldn’t be the only route.

How to communicate in an emergency post-Twitter

The route to communicate in an emergency is already with us. There is already a complex ecosystem of platforms, tools and channels. In the UK, as a population we tend to use five or six platforms. And there’s email.

For me the communicating in an emergency is creating sharable date-stamped content on a range of different platforms. Why date-stamped? Because the algorithms may not show the update for several days by which time the incident has moved on. Showing that the update is 10am on June 3 2023 builds in obsolescence.

The answer may be to post the same message to the corporate Facebook page, a WhatsApp community channel, Threads, email and he website. Yes, this is more work. 

What communicating in 2023 is resolutely not is trying to drive traffic to a website. Platforms penalise links. To reach people, you need to put the text of the update onto each platform rather than link back to the website. By all means update your website too. Just don’t think that people will navigate to it from Facebook, Twitter or Threads for that matter.    

Can you invest time in building an email list for people in an area prone to flooding? Of course you can but it’ll take time. Email is an important channel.  

Journalists and Twitter

Journos have loved Twitter for years. Its influence far outwerighs its audience largely because journalists were there for the breaking news. Not only that but the decision makers could make an announcement in 140 characters without having the fuss of organising a press conference. Or answer questions.

There may be alternative ways to message reporters day-to-day and Threads could be a useful place to point journos to in an emergency.

Twitter won’t disappear overnight 

Before Facebook there was MySpace. In 2008, it was the largest show in town and pulling in huge numbers. A series of wrong turns led it into decline. It still exists as a platform but its been a good decade since it was big enough for Ofcom to count it as a channel in the UK.  

Twitter will do the same. It’ll decline. It’ll find new direction. It may even have new leadership. History tells us that once decline sets in that’s it. It’s all a question of time.

You absolutely need to make a social media review

What about the other days of the year when you are looking to reach people with a shopping list of tailored messages? 

The answer has to be look to run a social media review on yourself to freshen up your position. I’ve blogged about this before. Much social media architecture was developed in 2010. Time has moved on. Those people have left.

Have a fresh look. 

The simple Janet and John of a social media review is to look at your audience, your current channels, UK data around who is using what in 2023 and you’ll start to see the patterns emerge.  

Bottom line… educate the client

The line I come back to again and again is to educate the client. This is the chief executive, the middle manager, the person you work with to communicate. If you’re having trouble keeping pace spare a thought for them.

Original source – The Dan Slee Blog » LOCAL SOCIAL: Is it time for a Local localgovcamp?