please empty your brain below

10 years on, and I still don't know what the point is, apart from Twitter making money.
I'm interested that you include the word "respond" in your initial list. At least a couple of district councils outside London that I have tried communicating with have not responded at all. Are all the London ones really responsive and proactive, or really are they just pushing propaganda?
Not sure the % of population column is representative. I live in @Royal_Greenwich but also follow neighbouring @LewishamCouncil as well as @cityoflondon as I work there and @CityWestminster as I work near there and spend time there. So that's four -- and I bet other people will follow two, three or four too.
I agree with Burntweenie. A communication medium needs to reach a minimum of say 25% of its target audience in order to be effective and none of those listed does so. But I don't (know how to) use either Facebook or Twitter, and I don't feel significantly isolated as a result.
I wonder if I'm in the minority in that I've had useful interactions with my local council on twitter.

So far they've fixed a stolen drain cover and cleared up flytipping that I've reported there.
So Twitter is really a sort of cross between Facebook (let's tell you what's I did) and email (someone's dumped a mattress in the park)!
I don’t follow Bromley but I do follow @BromleySnow. Worth a special mention perhaps.
Can someone explain to me why one would use Twitter rather than just send an email? It's time consuming enough keeping up with emails, I don't want to have to look at another medium as well.
Nice choice of post subject... it's also interesting how there doesn't seem to be that much correlation between the % population or follower count and my own findings, as proponents of certain boroughs would have you believe!
Cornish cockney - yeah, pretty much. The science side of twitter is more like extended drinks at the bar after a conference. I've made a few very good contacts that way.
I've never considered following my local council on Twitter, but thanks to this article, Barnet have just gained one more follower!
i suspect part of the reason Hillingdon has so many followers is from people who *work* around Heathrow - so the percentage residents figure is probably a off (to a lesser extent than City of London)
On the numbers of followers - I would hazard a guess that borough age demographics might hold the answer there.

Why did so many start during Feb-Apr 2009? Was it really the Stephen Fry lift thing?
why one would use Twitter rather than just send an email

Because, just as councils have adopted Twitter, so they have abandoned email. Few now publish a general email address, most offer an online form instead (which may or may not generate a confirmation email for your records).

Which is ironic: councils have abandoned email because people tend to forget essential details (such as the address where the bin hasn't been collected), meaning there has to be a follow-up dialogue, but a tweet is even more likely to lack the essential details.
Why Feb-April 2009? Stephen Fry partly, but also US Airways Flight 1549 in Jan 2009. It crashed in New York Harbor and Twitter was the way I and millions of others found out about it; and also other people live-reported it on Twitter.

It was also the time 3G smartphones started to become popular. Twitter on a laptop is very different from Twitter using a phone that you carry around. The first 3G iPhone was launched in 2008 and by early 2009 millions were using them and other smartphones.
Perhaps Bexley has far more older residents who don't use social media.

dg writes: About 12% of Bexley's residents are over 70 - a percentage beaten by Bromley and Havering.
As a Hillingdon resident I've never been tempted to follow them on Twitter. I'm surprised having just looked to see it is far less smug and self-congratulatory than the bi-monthly magazine for residents, though I think I'd find getting repeats of the same Tweet every couple of days a bit irritating.










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