The Internet Party is in the middle of its candidate selection process. They have published a short list of candidates here. So I thought I would go have a look and see how many I could find on twitter. There are 22 people on their short list. They are listed here in the same order as on their short list.
Out of 22 people on their short list, only 9 have easy to find Twitter accounts. To add to this, 4 of these 9 have less than 100 followers. Another 4 have between 100 and 1000, leaving just 1 with more than 1000 followers.
The Internet Party has been portrayed as a party that will appeal to younger people, and those who see the internet and social media as the way to unlock the potential New Zealand has. But so far it looks like less than half of the people on their candidate short list have Twitter accounts, with most of those having pretty minimal social media presences. It will be interesting to see who on this list gets selected in the end. I must say, if I was involved in the selection process, one of the points I would be considering is how much social media capital do the various candidates bring to the party. Will the be able to get the message out right from day one, or will there be days and weeks of online profile building before they are able to provide a useful level of return.
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