Gillard is no Twit

In the oh-so-quickly produced Downfall spoof video of Rudd's departure as PM, the witty creator summed up the ousted leader's media strategy as run by "Gen-Y morons" who wanted him simply to "use Twitter and say 'working families'."

Cruel though the sentiment might be, it does point to a certain irreducible truth about the former administration's use of social media. Rudd, much like US President Barack Obama in 2008, was hailed during the 2007 election for using new technologies in his campaign. YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, this was supposed to be a new era in connecting with voters and expanding our democracy.

Once voted in, however, there were lots of token new media efforts. Not least was the terrible Rudd "yoof" blog, which was notionally about connecting with Australia's young people, taking their comments to inform policy. The project was unceremoniously dumped a short time later.

Rudd's tweets in particular were criticised as over-scripted, over-political and sometimes not actually written by him. He eventually even created a system where his staff would sign the tweets one way and his personal tweets were signed another, but often neither of them were actually worth following. This was always tweeting for tweeting's sake.

In a tumultuous time, the new leader of the Labor Party, Julia Gillard has been asked a lot about what her new administration, if elected, would be like. "Moving forward", as they say in the new red-haired parlance, are we going to get much of the same? What would be different in the new ginger regime? Climate change, asylum seekers — all the big questions. Including one that has been constantly asked since she became PM. Will she join Twitter?

Finally, the news broke and radio 2UE got the scoop, interviewer Latika Bourke ironically enough tweeted the fact the new PM would be joining the online community: "I just asked Julia Gillard if she will join Twitter. She says she will join soon and she will be authoring the tweets."

And so she did.On Sunday Gillard joined, tweeted her first tweet: "I've decided it's time to take the Twitter plunge! Hopefully I'll master it. JG."

So it remains to be seen whether Gillard will indeed master it. She's off to a flying start. It's a smart move to differentiate herself from her predecessor, confirming that she will write her own tweets. And despite only two tweets in total, she already has 13,695 followers at last count (although small in comparison to Rudd's 940,526).

But beware Julia, this maybe your first step in the Twitterverse, but it's a fine line between using social media as a meaningful way to communicate with people, or simply as another way to put out a press release. Rudd, of course, was seen as doing the latter, especially when it was written by his team.

Coached tweets are clearly not the way to go. The more interesting pollies who tweet are the ones that do it as anybody else would. I mean we don't want to hear about what you had for breakfast everyday, but there needs to be some unscripted, unprepared remarks (as Tony Abbott would say) that can be taken as truthful and genuine.

Of course, it strikes Goanna that Gillard is perhaps not a Twitter person, not like, for example, Malcolm Turnbull who was always inclined towards such things. But she is also not Rudd, she is not likely (we hope) to tweet for the sake of tweeting.

In this next election I wager the PM will not employ new media in the way that Rudd so successfully did in the last, although it will still feature (perhaps an inevitability of campaigning in this brave new world of ours). It will always depend on the individual style of the pollie involved. Julia, in the end, seems like no Twit.