Councils short on (Twitter) characters
I can’t wait for baseball season. Not because I enjoy baseball. I enjoy the warm weather that comes with baseball season.
Oh, and I enjoy the baseball-related tweets that Woodland councilman Benjamin Fredricks (@bfredricks74) fires high and tight like a Nolan Ryan fastball. Fredricks is the only councilman in the Clark/Cowlitz area — maybe even the state — who posts videos of umpires ejecting coaches and players to his Twitter page.
In general, Fredricks does not have a lot of company on Twitter from his fellow Clark County and Woodland council members.
An informal check of the social networking site revealed just five council members and one mayor in Clark County had tweeted in the past 30 days from a public account. This does not include eggs — Twitter users who do not have a profile picture — or users whose Twitters are private (i.e., Battle Ground’s Adrian Cortes — @adriancortes).
A tweet is a post featuring 140 characters or less. It can include words, links, or hashtags, and more often than not includes declarations of love for Justin Bieber.
Washougal councilman Jon Russell (@Jon_Russell) has the most followers among Clark County council members with 574. He is also the second most prolific tweeter with 403. Fredricks had 599, as of this afternoon.
Russell’s fellow Washougal council member Jennifer McDaniel (@jmwashougal) has 28 followers and 377 tweets.
The Vancouver City Council has the highest number of active Twitter users.
I met the Godfather of Vancouver council tweeters Jack Burkman (@JackBurkman) at @thecolumbian‘s March 1 tweetup at Pizza Schmizza in Salmon Creek (@SchmizzaSC). Burkman has 77 followers and has tweeted 78 times.
Vancouver Mayor Tim Leavitt (@MayorTimLeavitt) and councilman Bart Hansen (@HansenBart) are relative Twitter newbies with 13 and 11 tweets, respectively.
That’s 20 minutes worth of tweets for Andrea Damewood (@col_cityhall) at a Vancouver City Council meeting. No joke. Check her Twitter.
PS: Check my Twitter (@col_smallcities) too!
