Of all the social media tools I use, twitter is my favourite (well, it is this week).
One of the reasons I started blogging today, a bit in advance of when I wanted to, was some activity on twitter and in some blogs by some colleagues.
A lot of my time is spent on twitter and I thought it would be useful if I could quickly scan bits and pieces of info released by government. So, with a bit of playing around, I pulled together an aggregated twitter feed for Her Majesty’s Government News. I’ve done my best to capture RSS feeds from as many .gov.uk websites as possible. The volume of news produced by the government can vary and it might not be right for everyone - but it works for me.
This isn’t exactly a new idea. There are a range of twitter streams that aggregate RSS feeds and there have been some practical demonstrations and a lot of thinking on how twitter and other social media can extend the reach of communications used in emergency situations.
I expect to have similar feeds up for UK government consultations; I was going to do one for local government, but Mr Briggs beat me to the line on that one.
I have also developed an aggregated twitter feed for travel advice that pulls in alerts from the US and Australia - it’s still a little clunky, so don’t rely on it if you are about to go to Tibet.
If I have missed your feed let me know: hmgovnews[at]google[dot]mail[dot]com
