The Spanish town of Jun, with a population of 3,500, has been using Twitter for governance since 2011. Its Mayor José Antonio Rodríguez Salas, uses the social media site to make the local government accessible.

“Jun essentially runs on Twitter, a ground-breaking use of social technology that, as far as we know, is unique. Jun is the first community to use a social medium comprehensively for all civic communication,” said a study by William Powers and Deb Roy of the Laboratory for Social Machines of MIT Media Lab. The post said that because these communications occur on a public social platform, they can be seen by everyone in the community. This ‘mutual visibility’ serves as both a carrot and a stick in governance.

TfL

Since June this year, Transport for London (TfL) has been making use of Twitter to alert its customers in real time of severe delays on key London underground and TfL rail services.

TfL manages London’s buses, the Tube network, Docklands Light Railway, London Overground, TfL Rail and London Trams; and runs Santander Cycles, London River Services, London Dial-a-Ride, Victoria Coach Station, and London Transport Museum.

A blog post by Twitter UK said that this initiative of Twitter and TfL allows anyone who follows any combination of its select TfL Twitter feeds to be able to opt-in to receive instant notifications about the disruption. Notifications are sent to customers as a ‘direct message’ on Twitter. Earlier a user had to visit the relevant account or had to search through her timeline for the latest tweets.

Related Topics
comment COMMENT NOW