He's still tweeting (see here), actually does this in person, responds and jokes with his audience and frequently uses Twitter as a test group to ideas / statements / news events.
The Dutch MEP candidates are now also on Twitter, but this looks like more of a stunt. Verhagen has made consistently use of it.
Granted, Twitter is not a blog and it won't go in depth - but it is interactive with people and it's refreshingly open. I must say, Verhagen gets my credits for this.
Twitter as a form of engagement
The BNP using the web to raise nearly £400,000 (successfully, too)
An MEP candidate taking donations by SMS - which is a very, very clever move, because younger people are conditioned to vote and pay for media and content by SMS
There are other new models which new media will make possible. The MSM won't be competing because there's still this 19th century idea of The Writer or The Editor who monopolises your attention with their inherently valuable and entertaining insights and bon mots, set in the shining frame of a magnificent vehicle called a newspaper or TV show.
That idea is dying now. It's being reinvented on blogs, but it's also being fragmented and mutated elsewhere, as people are finding that they're being allowed to talk back.
Not everyone wants to be sold interactive politics as a clearly delineated experience.
But when people are already comfortable with interactive and social media of all kinds, it makes perfect sense to colonise those media with political outposts.
