April 07, 2010, 5:21 AM EDT
By Catherine Dodge
April 7 (Bloomberg) -- Ask Senator John McCain about his popularity on Twitter and he’s quick to respond.
“One million seven-hundred and forty-one thousand,” the 73-year-old Arizona Republican said, reciting the number of his followers on the third-most-popular social-networking site in the U.S.
McCain, who said during his 2008 presidential bid that he didn’t use e-mail and was learning to get online, is among about 200 members of the U.S. House and Senate who tweet -- sending messages of 140 characters or less -- about topics as varied as policy and politics to food and sports.
“I love it; it’s so interactive,” said McCain, who has more than 46 times as many followers on Twitter as the next most popular member of Congress, Democratic Senator Claire McCaskill of Missouri.
The surge in the political use of social-networking sites such as Twitter is likely to grow as more lawmakers realize its effectiveness as a way to reach and hear from voters, said Darrell West, director of governance studies at the Washington- based Brookings Institution.
“You’ve got to get out of the bubble,” said Representative Darrell Issa, a California Republican who sends about four tweets a day, the most of any member of Congress, according to the Web site Tweetcongress.org, which tracks congressional tweeting.
2 comments:
Then why is he using @TeamMcCain with only 13,000 followers? Also Twitter is only interactive if you follow people back and actually talk with other people.
Sorry Jacob but Team McCain is only one of his Twitter accounts. His main Twitter account SenJohnMcCain has 1,737,920 followers. Twitter is just one tool in today's new social media. John McCain has learned to use them all.
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