Let's start with a simple question...

What is the ideal way for a politician to use twitter?

Answers may vary but here is my ideal twitter use for a politician.

1) Have the politician himself send a few personal updates, where he is and what he's working on.

2) Have the staff post relevant links to articles about the politician, post upcoming travel plans, post a few personal updates as the staffer.

3) And most importantly, respond to peoples queries on twitter, run constant twitter searches for the politicians name, important bills etc. and respond to each one.
This dream list is unattainable with just one person, so is it possible to use one twitter account with multiple people while still keeping it personal, relevant and timely?

Enter CoTweet, CoTweet allows you do do all of those things, and very easily I might add.
You can have multiple users, scheduled tweets, personalized tweets, record of who replied to whom and when, the ability to assign responses to other people, excellent search features.

Think of CoTweet as a CRM for twitter.

From the CoTweet website

CoTweet powers brands on Twitter. Designed for businesses using Twitter to engage existing customers and attract new ones, CoTweet is a comprehensive Twitter business platform that supports both proactive marketing communication and response-driven customer support.
CoTweet allows multiple people to communicate through corporate Twitter accounts and stay in sync while doing so.

You can read a great review over at microblink.

I've been using CoTweet for several weeks now with the company I work for and it has been simple and amazing.

Not only is it a great tool for corporate brands but I believe CoTweet could change the way politicians interact with their constituents on twitter.

It's currently in private beta but I would wager they open it up with a few more options soon. Take a look and post any comments below.

Cross posted at KeystoneConservative.com

As we enter TechRepublican's third (calendar) year as a group blog focusing on the intersection of technology and politics, we're pleased to roll out a modern design for the site (appropriately, its third). Let's dig in.

The approach for the design was to keep some familiar elements of the old site, while freshening things up with a darker, more modern look and a liquid layout. To that end, we're continuing to keep it simple and have removed a majority of the sidebar items that added little value.

We've tried an interesting violator concept with a blank/white version of the logo that appears when users enlarge their screen or have a very wide monitor. To me this represents a nod to the past.

Other design features are designed to provide a clean-tech feel. We use a monotype font, and block-quotes are set in indigo, with a hash sign--the way code comments in most Unix-based text editors are set. This likely looks familiar to a majority of you.

We've integrated Twitter so that folks can participate in the discussion using the #TechGOP hashtag regardless of whether they blog at TechRepublican or not. This is also a quick way for contributors to add a quick update. [Follow @TechRepublican for latest blog posts.]

The navigation of the site is an experiment to better reflect our understanding of who our audience is and what they read us for. The current design emphasizes the personality and credibility of the author -- by making the author the primary "filtering" mechanism rather than a list of categories or tags. If this approach doesn't work, it'll be quite simple to add a link (or default) to show all posts. We're also working on adding a search feature to access archives.

So you'll notice two sections in the main column. The top section shows the latest two posts regardless of author. Below the latest posts, the entries are sorted by author which are listed in the right-hand sidebar. When you click on an author name, their posts will sort under the latest posts, and you'll see their picture and a short bio (still need pics and bios from some of you). Most of our contributors (including me) don't post everyday but rather when they have something to say.

[Side note: not all authors and contributors are listed. As we further flesh out a key group of contributors we'll be adding more to the list. If you want to be a contributor email me at DAG at davidallgroup.com.]

I welcome your feedback on the new design in the comments. Enjoy and welcome to 2009.