While C-SPAN dominated the DNC and RNC Twitter coverage, CNN was heads and shoulders above the other cable news networks when it came to making use of Twitter. As with many using Twitter for the first time during the conventions, it was a learning experience.

In one of my own convention tweets from a week ago:

#RNC08 CNN assistant to Wolf Blitzer: "You should mention we're live Twittering on air." Blitzer: "I don't even know what that means."

And now, we learn that CNN presenter Rick Sanchez is debuting his own show today at 3pm EST that may be driven by Sanchez's Twitter followers. It may sound a little crazy, but it's certainly workable. Have one or two of the show's producers watching the Twittter feed, pick out a select few before broadcast, and update during commercial breaks, etc. Sanchez already tweets during his regular broadcasts, so it's not a stretch. You could also have nice additions, like having guests answer live questions from people on Twitter.

Sanchez already has 9,000 followers and I tend to use the metric that 1,000 followers is "famous for Twitter." It's also worth noting that Sanchez and CNN used Twitter to cover things beyond politics, including Hurricane Gustav.

h/t Jay Rosen
 

A couple of interesting new things I noticed about C-SPAN's convention hubs: Any bloggers who will be twittering the conventions can simply add the #DNC08 and/or #RNC08 tags to their tweets and they will appear in the C-SPAN hub's Twitter feed. That's a great way for grassroots bloggers and institutional voices alike to take part in the overall discussion.

Second, although the C-SPAN video archives to not appear quite ready for embedding, they are accessible. You wan watch one of my favorite all-time Washington Journal episodes, featuring Christopher Hitchens and Andrew Sullivan in 2002 discussing their appreciation for George Orwell here. Pretty cool toys for the tech geek set. 

Ground Game plays a supporting role in this detailed post from Blog P.I. on the rise of Twitter spam. Long story short, I have a Twitter account that I use occasionally to promote Ground Game posts and other items. I have a small list of friends and colleagues who follow that account. But over the past few weeks, I have received about two dozen unsolicited "followers," all named after presidential candidates, followed by a numerical identifier, i.e. "RudyGiuliani52 is now following you on Twitter." Blog P.I. adds:

You know, if these were simply attached to RSS feeds and genuine aggregators of political news, I wouldn’t mind so much. Yes, the aggressive, untargeted following is certainly annoying. But these accounts do not drive traffic to the sites where the words originated. This also makes the creator’s intent all the more inscrutable; they aren’t saying anything, they aren’t promoting anything, and they aren’t updated by hand. The only thing it’s good for, maybe, is souring users on Twitter.