Governor Cuomo's 'Best Social Media People Around' Claim Parody Account Is The Real Governor

from the if-they're-the-best-around,-expand-your-circle dept

Via Jeff Nolan, we learn that the new Governor of New York, Andrew Cuomo, who has a history of misguided attacks on social networks, apparently isn’t very good with social media personally. In setting up the new website of the governor, the staff linked to a parody Twitter account as the official Twitter account of the governor. Rather than the real account, the supremely boring and corporate @NYGovCuomo, the website linked to @NYGovernor, which was an amusing parody account. Not surprisingly, whoever is behind @NYGovernor had a lot of fun with it, while people thought it was the official account.

While this may seem like a minor slip up, it’s indicative of a larger problem. In the same article, Cuomo’s staff apparently told reporters that “Cuomo did not have time to ‘twitter on his own’ and that the ‘best web and social media people around’ were now in charge of his personal account.” Of course, those “best web and social media people around,” apparently couldn’t even figure out which account was their own, and have followed it up with perhaps one of the most boring Twitter feeds around. Perhaps Cuomo could take a lesson from Cory Booker, who despite working over 20 hours a day while helping to shovel people out of the recent blizzard, was still able to tweet basic updates.

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Comments on “Governor Cuomo's 'Best Social Media People Around' Claim Parody Account Is The Real Governor”

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22 Comments
Anonymous Coward says:

Re:

That’s another debate for another time… and the point still stands. People have lives. If you don’t spend every spare minute on twitter or facebook then you’re not cool. Sigh. I agree that “hiring” people to “represent” him seems “odd” but other than the abominable snow man that uses twitter, do you know many 50+ year olds and politicians that do? No. So because Frosty was able to go help tech savvy people, he left the others helpless… Did you hear about the mayor that answered the phone? No because it’s not social networking and geeks don’t care.

Trails (profile) says:

Re:

Holy curmudgeon!! Were those damnable teenagers on your lawn again?

Stories about new media being used in different ways is part of what techdirt is about. If you get annoyed, why do you come here?

The idea of using something like twitter to do what the mayor did is interesting, and wouldn’t be practical with a phone. One of your points appears to be “it’s just another communication mmedium” which is right (and oft-mentioned by Mike) but that story highlights some of the advantages of that medium. Why wouldn’t this be interesting to people who read a blog about communication and technology?

Anyway, lest you prematurely mess your Depends, perhaps you’d find this site more to your liking? http://www.senior.com/

Marcus Carab (profile) says:

Re:

Yes, everyone that thinks people that use twitter have to much time on their hands are definitely clueless

If they haven’t actually used Twitter and experienced its massive potential for communication, real-time search, news monitoring and other great functions, then yes, they are clueless, because they don’t have a clue. They are just jumping to conclusions.

Have you immersed yourself in Twitter to see what it’s all about? I was skeptical at first, and I even almost fell into the “waste of time” crowd, but I forced myself to experience it first-hand, and then I realized very quickly how wrong I was.

So tell us – what is your experience with Twitter? Do you have an account? Have you explored the people that can follow, including personalities, organizations and curated feeds? Have you tried reaching out to public figures, reporters, publications, etc. to understand this new and direct means of communication? Have you tried using it to request tech support or other customer service (certain companies are phenomenal at responding to this)? Have you tried its search function during an in-progress event or breaking news? Have you monitored the hash-tag for a major conference or panel discussion that you were unable to attend? Have you tried out some of the many data visualizations that build on twitter, to get insight into broad trends over time and geography? Have you tried using third-party search engines like Topsy to see what kind of results come from social search?

When you can answer yes to even half of those questions, then go ahead and make your case for why you still think Twitter is a waste of time. Until then, yes, you are very much clueless

The Mighty Buzzard (profile) says:

Re:

I can answer yes to pretty much all of those questions. Hell, I even wrote my own Twitter client. Yet I still think Twitter is mostly a huge time sink that very little useful or worthwhile comes out of. Much like most of the rest of the Internet.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m all in favor of wasting time on something you enjoy. I’m just honest enough with myself to not say that Twitter, Facebook, ICanHasCheezburger, or commenting on TD are productive uses of my time.

Anonymous Coward says:

Do you have people of color in higher titles of Information Technology Specialist? In Cuomo’s government, are they smart enough to hold higher Information Technology Specialist or Manager titles? Does Cuomo’s government think they have higher degrees and they can be Managers? I don’t think they have a single black person in Information Technology at the Department of Transportation

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