British Government To Start Tweeting
The British government is helping ministers understand technology by publishing a guide to use the micro-blogging site Twitter, with the aim of extending its news and corporate messages online.
The Foreign Office and Downing Street government departments are already tweeting, and the 20-page guide details how ministers should provide an "informal" and "human" voice.
"We are looking at technology that is only a couple of years old, that people are still coming to terms with and finding the best way to use it," said a Cabinet spokesman.
Neil Williams of the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS), who wrote the guide, said that ministers should tweet "a minimum of 2 and a maximum of 10 tweets per working day, with a minimum gap of 30 minutes between tweets to avoid flooding our followers."
Ministers were also asked to tweet with credibility and bear in mind relevant issues while avoiding commercially or politically sensitive information.
Campaign messages are not appropriate unless there are current elements involved.
About 19 government departments currently run twitter feeds.
"The idea was to give some sort of guidance of joining everyone up so everyone is using it to the same kind of end," said the spokesman.
Twitter, a social networking site that allows users to post up to 140 characters in a micro-blogging service it offers, has surged in popularity since its 2006 launch.
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