Friday, July 24, 2009

The glorious twitterfication of the Norfolk Blogger

Many congratulations to Nich Starling, the Norfolk Blogger, for his excellent coverage of the Norwich North by-election.

The by-election seemed to come as a remarkable piece of serendipity for the NB. You only have to go back to 16th April and he was thinking of knocking blogging on the head:

Oh I just can't be bothered

I am wondering if it really is time to knock this whole blogging business on the head. After 30 months, thousands of postings, lots of ranting, and lots of time wasted, I really am finding it very difficult to summon up the energy to write anything that is not only interesting to someone else, but is of interest to me...

But, along came the by-election, bang on cue, and the NB was on the spot at the right time...there followed a glorious stream of posts. Every piece of literature was photographed, every twitch of his letter box chronicled, every Tory car drawing up outside noted. Wonderful!

And what is even more wonderful is Nich's Pauline conversion on the Twitter front. As recently as February, the NB was referring to Twitter as "Tw*tter". I wrote at the time:

The dear old Norfolk Blogger really has got a starling in his hard drive over Twitter. His site now has a "Tw*tter" box in the sidebar with these updates:I am using my computer (1 day ago)I ate my tea and went to the toilet (3 days ago)Are you really that sad that you honestly want to keep track of everything I do ? (About 38 years ago).

Nich has also done a posting entitled Twitter? Get a life! When I suggested he would be using Twitter soon, Nich replied:"Paul, i won't be twittering for one very simple reason, I have a life ! All the reasons people have given for using it so far centre around the fact that they seem not to have a life an like knowing the laundry details and habits of people are really are unimportant"....You know, I think he's coming round....

Well, with the onset of the Norwich North by-election, the Norfolk Blogger is now a fully fledged Tweeter. It's a remarkable turnaround! He's now got 216 followers and has tweeted 68 times with such updates as:

Am sitting 3 yards from Anita anand and 5 from John pienaar. from TwitterBerry

And try as I might, I can't find a single Norfolk Blogger tweet about going to the toilet and having tea.

There's a wonderful tweet from Nich this evening:

The one big pautive of the campaign ? I am enjoying politics again and want to be politically active again.

Marvellous!

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