Sen McCaskill says "no" to following on Twitter...for now.

Sen McCaskill (@clairecmc) has now weighed in on the question of should politicians be following people on Twitter . She tweets if she tried to follow thousands of people responsively she would have no time for her job. It's similar to a conversation going on with bloggers right now. And there is some truth to that. But I think she is missing something.

I want to clarify (add to) my original thoughts here. I don't think these politicians should be sitting in front of a computer, or on their mobile, constantly watching the stream from people they are following. There is a lot of garbage people are sharing on Twitter. I would hope @clairecmc or @royblunt are using their time to work on important things and not watching what people are eating for lunch on Twitter. So I understand why she thinks it's a bad idea to follow people. But I think this takes us back to her not "getting" Twitter.

First, if we you are not following me I can't DM you. @clairecmc says to just go to her website to contact her then. This is consistent with her use. She wants to use Twitter to broadcast her thoughts and you can contact her in other places. But why are you forcing the user/follower/constituent to go down a different path than they want to - to get a message to you? Why not just have your DMs go to info@claireonline.com? That's the same email address I would send to if I took the extras steps to go to one of your websites . That's a very easy setting to adjust on Twitter. Or make DMs go to a certain staffer whose job it is to reply or forward the important ones.

Second, "listening" on Twitter is not the same as "following" people or watching the stream on your home page. She is right, with as many followers as she has, there is no way she can keep up with what they are doing. And there is no reason to see what all these people are doing all the time. But is she watching for posts with her name in them? Is she following issues on Twitter that affect her state? Using Twitter Search or even better Tweet Deck make this very easy to do in a little amount of time. I don't think she should personally be doing this, but her new media director should be. Or someone else on the staff at least. It's this staffer's job to then get the important/interesting ones on to Sen McCaskill.

Now - my original post on this had to do with Roy Blunt . There is a big difference in how these two staffs need to use Twitter right now I would think. Blunt is in campaign mode with his announcement that he is running for Senate. While all politicians are always campaigning, McCaskill is not up in the next election. So there will be a different approach. Blunt needs Twitter a lot more than McCaskill right now.

In the end, obviously, Sen McCaskill should use Twitter however she wants. There is no "right" way to use it. If it becomes a too big a burden for her then she stops using it all together. But as someone on the outside, it does not look like she, or her staff, really know what can be done with it yet. And I think this is true from about 90% of the politicians out there. Like I said, there is no right way to do it, but there are more effective ways to do it.

I think @royblunt made the right decision to start following. As Twitter grows, and these staffs start to understand it better, I think @clairemcm will start following as well. After that, can these staffs figure out how to "listen" to Twitter?