Twitter habits of the kingmakers

Twitter has been huge at this election. From campaign arm to breaking news source, and more recently a post-election forum for debate, the microblogging service has thrived during Election 2010.

But how often do the cross-benchers in the House of Representatives tweet? I decided to find the the four independents and Greens MP on Twitter to see how they’ve embraced the service.

The Greens Adam Bandt is definitely the biggest Twitterer of the bunch. His following has grown by an average of 46 people per day and now stands at 3,525. He follows 1,112 people, among them ABC journalist Annabel Crabb and independent online news source Crikey. He also tweets fairly regularly, with 25 Tweets in the last week. Bandt seems to be “with it” in Twitter terms, his tweets a mixture of informational, conversational and light-hearted humour. In one he even says “Welcome to Twitter’s ‘Fake Adam Bandt’. My only request: please be funny!” (Note: I searched and could not find the fake one).

Rob Oakeshott definitely knows his way around Twitter, but one would guess he’s spent so much time being wooed by Julia Gillard and Tony Abbott that this has left him with no time in the day in which to tweet. He’s picked up an average of 145 new followers per day this week to currently sit at 1,267. He follows 949 people, including yours truly as of 10:44 this morning. His last tweet however was on August 18. It looks like at the start of the election campaign in late July he was quite the tweeter, but by the second week of August had largely lost interest. A tweet from 28 July says “Thanks for the oranges Tony!”. I assume he does not mean Abbott.

Bob Katter gave up on his Twitter account before it began. His solitary tweet from 28 May says “Getting on Twiter to connect with the real Australians – country Australians” but ol’ Bob has been quiet since. This may explain why only two people per day are joining his following – which currently stands at 729 people. In return he follows an interesting if short list of just 17 people which includes Tony Abbott, Godwin Grech, Laurie Oakes and Bill Gates.

Tony Windsor, Andrew Wilkie and WA Nationals MP Tony Crook are not on Twitter.