Congressman Wants to Set Rules for Official Twitter 'Tweets'
This type of communication is typified by sites like Twitter, which allows users to write short notes or updates on their daily, hourly or even minute-by-minute activity, and share the information with people who subscribe to the service. It's fast, easy, and lets large groups of people follow the activities of their friends or others whenever they update their Twitter feeds. A single Twitter update is known as a "Tweet."
Blogging and e-mail have been used as tools by politicians running for office, but as official communication, this is something new, and the U.S. Congress has rules on how its members send messages to constituents.
According to Republican Representative John Culberson of Texas, it's time for Congress to catch up with the micro-blogging fad. Current Congressional rules apply to e-mail and Web sites, but don't account for messages that appear on Web sites outside government purview, such as Twitter. To him, easy communication is a critical tool for government. As Culberson told CNN in an interview last week: "The single-minded goal needs to be to shine sunlight in every dark corner of the Congress, to make the Congress and the government as transparent as humanly possible."
One of the concerns is that Twitter and other sites, like Qik.com, and Utterz.com, or even YouTube, which allow for video clips to be shared, can also include advertising, or have content that might not fit with an elected official's goals. That gives some pause to House Franking Commission Chairman Mike Capuano, a Massachusetts Democrat, who says some representatives might have concerns about their postings showing up next to political ads.
For his part, Culberson is going to continue using sites like Twitter undaunted. "I'm not stopping," he told CNN. "They will not stop me. They can no more regulate the Internet than they can regulate the wind." [Source: CNN.]
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