Eric Lee

Those of us trying to use email as a campaigning tool are running into some serious problems these days. Getting heard over all the background noise is becoming more difficult. Inboxes are filling up rapidly. At best we skim, and don't read, the hundreds of messages we receive every week. And that's the messages that actually get through our spam filters.

Unions need to find a way to cut through that noise and reach their members. Members need an alternative to the spam-filled, overflowing inbox. Everyone needs messages to be brief and to the point.

Twitter may offer a solution.

Twitter is relatively new online service that allows people to sign up and post very short messages. The limit is 140 characters. Twitter is completely free of charge, and advertising-free as well.

Once you've signed up to the service you can sign up as a 'follower' of an individual or organization, and receive those short messages, which are called 'tweets'.

The real power of Twitter is that it's platform-independent. You receive those messages where it's most convenient for you. That can be through your own Twitter page on the web, or it can be as text messages to your mobile phone, or via the Instant Messager of your choice, or through an RSS news feeds.

I have to confess that when Twitter was launched, I was told about by a friend in the Netherlands. I didn't get it. It struck me as being just one more time-waster. It turns out that he was right and I was wrong. Now I think that Twitter offers real potential for campaigning organizations like unions.

Though launched for one specific purpose (to tell your friends what you're doing) Twitter was quickly adapted by campaigning organizations for our own purposes. I'm reminded of Meetup.com, designed as a dating service but now widely used by political campaigns.

The Hillary Clinton campaign began sending out 'tweets' and eventually had over 4,000 followers. The Barack Obama campaign did the same thing and got 44,000 followers. That says something about the success of the two campaigns in using new technology.

Twitter is used by the American Red Cross for get out short messages regarding natural disasters. Nasa uses Twitter to stream news from the Mars lander. (Followers of Nasa's tweets were the first to learn that ice had been discovered on the red planet.) Mozilla used it to provide updated on the launch of the new Firefox web browser.

One of the most interesting uses of Twitter occurred when a young American activist visiting Egypt was arrested while covering anti-government demonstrations. While in police custody, he used his mobile phone to send off a one-word message to Twitter: "Arrested." (Posting Twitter messages from one's mobile phone is incredibly simple.) His friends, who were following his tweets, immediately began making phone calls and sending out emails. He was released from custody.

LabourStart launched its Twitter service in June 2008. We were initially aiming to solve one particular problem: How do you send out short text messages to phones in different countries, free of charge? Within a few hours, over 100 people -- most of whom had not previously used Twitter -- signed up to our group. By the time this article appears in print, we expect that number to exceed 1,000.

Unlike the other social networks such as MySpace and Facebook, Twitter need not be a time sink. We encourage people to sign up and become 'followers' of LabourStart, and to ensure that our messages are delivered to their mobile phones.

But we don't encourage people to amass hundreds of friends, as one tends to do on other networks -- because you don't want too many text messages pouring into your phone. (You can instruct Twitter to only send messages from certain accounts to your phone and read the others online.)

The idea is not to add one more way to receive junk mail, to contribute to information overload. What we are trying to do is cut through the background noise, and to create a new delivery channel for important information and campaigns -- in very short bursts. Twitter may be the solution we were looking for.

Posted by Eric Lee at 07:17 AM | Permalink | Comments (10) | TrackBacks (2)

One of Canada's largest unions, the 340,000 member National Union of Public and General Employees (NUPGE), has joined the battle to defend net neutrality. The fact that most trade unionists won't even understand what that means underlines how significant NUPGE's decision actually is.

Until now, all Internet traffic has been treated equally by Internet Service Providers (ISPs). That means that whether you're visiting the website of your union or your employer, your government or local community organization, your request to view a web page (or download a video) are treated the same. And the same goes for email -- emails sent by the largest global corporations are treated the same as emails sent by the smallest dissident groups.

But lately, some ISPs have begun complaining that there's a growing cost to treating the massively-expanding traffic on the net equally. They're arguing that companies should be able to pay to give their content priority.

Net neutrality is the "principle that all Internet traffic be treated equally -- regardless of subject, origin, destination or application type," according to the Canadian union. NUPGE is joining a broad coalition in Canada and globally which is battling to preserve net neutrality, and to get governments to pass legislation to guarantee it. Unfortunately, that coalition includes few trade unions, even if unions have much to gain from keeping the net neutral.

(In some cases, unions have taken a stand against net neutrality -- most notably the Communication Workers of America, which accepts the arguments made by employers.)

Meanwhile, Barack Obama says that federal rules ensuring net neutrality would be high on the agenda during his first year in the Oval Office.

At a recent conference in London, American ISPs made their case, with Jim Ciccione of AT&T calling for companies to be able to exercise "network management" (which is code for no net neutrality). It turns out Mr Ciccione was preaching to the converted.

Virgin Media CEO Neil Berkett recently attacked the principle of net neutrality branding it as "bollocks". His company has over 3.6 million customers, making it the UK's second largest ISP. He said that Virgin is already in talks with unnamed content providers about paying to have their content delivered faster than others. He specifically warned that public service broadcasters like the BBC (not to mention unions) who choose not to pay for faster access to Virgin's subscriber base would end up in "bus lanes", effectively having their content delivered to consumers at a lower speed.

And Virgin is not alone. Simon Gunter, head of strategy at Tiscali, another major ISP, said that "it could be time for a new pricing model." Neil Laycock, the chief executive of Plusnet, another UK ISP, says bluntly that "net neutrality is a pipe-dream".

Government bodies in the UK, including Ofcom and DTI, have not committed to defending the principle of net neutrality. Speaking in 2007, Ofcom's director of policy development said that "the European regulatory framework allows us to deal with any issues that may arise," dismissing the need for any efforts to be made in the UK. In light of what ISPs are now saying -- and doing -- this strikes me as being overly complacent.

Perhaps it's time for British unions and the TUC to follow in the footsteps of Canadian trade unionists and campaign in defence of net neutrality -- before it's too late.

Posted by Eric Lee at 04:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

A recent column by web useability expert Jakob Nielsen should be of particular interest to trade unionists. Nielsen is an internationally recognized speaker and author who has pioneered studies in how people actually use the Internet, leading to some major shifts in the way websites are designed.

While Nielsen and others have carried out many studies of how older people and the very young use the net, only now he has the numbers on what he calls "mainstream" users, aged 25 - 60, and there are implications for trade unions in his research.

The most chilling statistic is this one: people's ability to use websites declines by 0.8% per year. As he explains, "a 40-year-old user will take 8% longer than a 30-year-old user to accomplish the same task. And a 50-year-old user will require an additional 8% more time." Nielsen says that this occurs "mostly because they spend more time per page, but also because of navigation difficulties".

This matters for trade unions, as the average age of our members is considerably higher than that of the general population.

I saw some of this myself at a recent training session I ran for trade unionists from a dozen Asian countries. Each sat in front of a computer screen and all of them had computers back home.

When I asked everyone to go to a particular web page it took approximately ten minutes for the entire room to get on to the same page. I found that about half the people had difficulty locating and filling in the address bar in their web browser. Others were challenged by the notion of scrolling down a page.

And the average age of these unionists was considerably lower than that of the typical British trade unionist.

Nielsen predicts that over time, this age differentual will disappear as increasingly people will have been using the net for much longer periods of their lives. But for the next decade or so, it's critical for those who design and manage websites aimed at trade union members to take this research into account.

The only way to know for sure if your website is useable, Nielsen says, is to test it with real users. I wonder how many of our unions actually do that.

Posted by Eric Lee at 04:05 PM | Permalink

I've posted a handful (literally) of reviews on the Amazon website. I didn't even remember that I had, but I just now had to post one about the new James Bond book so I returned to the site.

In looking over my reviews, I see that I posted a one sentence review of Microsoft Excel a year ago. Here's what I wrote:

"Why would anyone pay over £170 for a piece of software which does nothing more than Open Office.org does -- and OpenOffice.org is completely free of charge?"

Nearly a year later, someone posted a comment on my review (I didn't realize you could do this). It's worth repeating here:

"This is so true - I dowloaded openoffice on reading this and it is very good. converts all your old word or .xls files and is easy to use with the same functionality of office. plus I am quids in as was about to spend £180 on Excel. Major mistake if I had done that! Great post Eric."

One more convert to free software -- won over by a review on Amazon. I wonder what else we can use Amazon reviews for?

Posted by Eric Lee at 09:19 AM | Permalink