Twit Face

Today's front page revelation from D.C.'s preeminent political newspaper, Politico, is that lobbyists are not down with being up on their social media. The article suggests that it's strange for this center of national power to have so little presence on the world's most popular form of media, the constant barage of updates from Facebook and Twitter. As the author puts it,

About half of the year's top-grossing lobby shops have no discernible presence on either Facebook or Twitter, the nation's two most popular social-media sites, a POLITICO analysis* indicates. Most of the rest have two- or three-figure followings that would embarrass a not-particularly-popular ninth-grader. 

It isn't surprising, given the audience for Politico (I picked up mine at my friendly local Starbucks, nestled comfortably between K Street and the IMF, whilst ordering a Dirty Hipster) that the artcile focused on the loss to public relations specialists of a potential power source at the public square that is the interwebz. What is surprising is that message's provenance in Dave Levinthal, a former Communications Director at the Center for Responsive Politics, which claims its mission as "to create a more educated voter, an involved citizenry and a more transparent and responsive government."

The fact lobbyists don't yet understand the Twitterz while elected officials have begun to is a positive sign that there is an area of public life untouched by the enormous quantities of money spent shaping public policy. However, it also means that the Facebook-friendless lobbyists are still doing their work behind closed doors, in the computer-free smoke-filled back rooms of yore. That is the true concern: not the impact that Farragut North is failing to make 140 characters at a time on an iPhone-glued electorate, but the impact they continue to make outside the scrutiny of a public that, to its credit, is a greater fan of the President than of Katy Perry.

So pursue your right to e-rage, or better yet, engage in a reasoned, populist discourse, and Tweet Dave.

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* I understand "POLITICO analysis" to mean "an intern counted." I do, however, want to credit Dave and his copy editor for their excellent hyphen usage.