The social media mayor explains the strategy behind his hyperactive Twitter feed . He regrets just one tweet, and he can't think of another politician who gets it.
Politicians' Twitter accounts come in three varieties: There are the plain-vanilla feeds run by a staffer terrified of doing anything interesting; the one-way, sometimes compelling, streams of consciousness maintained by Senator Chuck Grassley and a few others.
And then there’s Cory Booker’s Twitter feed, a singular glimpse at the future of political life on the social web.
Booker, the 42-year old former Rhodes Scholar and current Mayor of Newark, has won fame for his total personal commitment to his job — he recently pulled a woman out of a burning building — which is embodied by his hyperactive Twitter feed, run solely by Booker himself. Booker tweets at all hours, his feed a mix of responses to constituents complaining about broken traffic lights, self-help aphorisms, and the occasional song lyric or words of encouragement for the New Jersey Devils. He has posted 15,305 tweets since signing up for the service as a first-term mayor in 2010.
In an interview with BuzzFeed in his City Hall office Thursday, Booker outlined his approach to Twitter, and offered advice for a generation of politicians who might want to wrest control of their accounts from staff.
Twitter as a faster 311
Booker says Twitter isn't the main way he interacts with his constituents.
"People tweet me about issues all the time and I’m one step ahead of where my department heads are," he said. "It still seems strange that people will tweet quicker than they’ll call our version of the 311 line. So it’s a very powerful tool for me to cull from my constituents issues and concerns, have a back and forth, clarify things."
"A rightful criticism I once read about our Twitter feed is – is it replicable for other cities? Is it the right structured way to manage? What I say is that my Twitter feed reflects my walking around. Today I was just driving around the city. People yell at me, I need a job, I’ll stop and talk to them."
Booker follows 60,000 people and is followed by 1.2 million and says he’s inundated with at-replies and DM's every day. He said he gets crazy direct messages "all the time" and does respond to the occasional direct message.
He only regrets one tweet
