Well, to answer it somewhat belatedly: yes it was really her, Parliament’s youngest Member. Sitting to my left in her office, logged into our page with her very own personal Facebook account and trying to read all those questions as they were coming in (three per minute) and to type in as many answers as possible, and to refresh the page every now and then, just to be confronted with another dozen of new questions each time…. and I was sweating.

It was an experiment, I had warned her before. Still, I must admit that we, my collegauges Anete and Raffaella and myself (we look jointly after Parliament’s Facebook page) were “somewhat” nervous.

After all, though young (25) and familiar with social media and their use for politics, Emilie Turunen is not only a real person but also an MEP (really). And the whole thing was going to be  live….

The scope for managing the whole experiment once started were …limited

So the scope for managing the whole experiment once started were… limited. Even technically, this was terra incognita. Facebook pages are not made for chats among “fans” (the Facebook chat application allows only for chats among mutal friends). On the other hand: We had seen many times that our posts or comments in reaction to the posts did trigger truly pan-European discussions among fans. So wasn’t this just simply the next logical step?

But still, we simply did not know what would happen come 16:30. Would anyone be interested ? What if only a handful of comments came in? What kind of things would people post and how would she react ?

Finally the hour, no: the minute of truth: The questions came in, by the second that Anete had posted the opening status update with Emilie’s photo, more than she could possibly handle.

Comments and questions touched upon more or less any aspect of EU and current affairs that people who care about the EU, and politics more globally, may be interested in : from the financial crisis and its impact for employment in Europe to the Copenhagen climate summit, EU enlargements, Denmark and the Euro, political youth participation, the next EU Commission, and transparency of EU decision-making… to name just some.

Quite a few Facebook fans also wanted to know more about Emilie Turunen and what it is like to be a Member of this Parliament at such a young age. Do you feel accepted?

I have to show my badge more often than the 55-year old men in suits!

In her own words:  “Yes, I feel accepted. I think it is all about preparation, seriousness in the debates, competence and self-confidence. But of course I have to show my badge (that shows I am a member) more often than the 55-year old men in suits!”

Finally, at 17:00 I felt relieved and knew : “Wow, this has worked!”

Emilie Turunen, although the 30 minutes must have been stressful for her, clearly was pleased as well with how things went. She seemed even more enthusiastic then before the whole thing: impressed by the geographical variety of the EP page fan community, the immediateness of reactions, the generally friendly tone and the fact that all comments (well almost) were very much on topic and showed a keen, authentic  interest in the Parliament and her work and as an MEP. Even  more, some fans posted comments after the chat, and they were, now this is an understatement, very encouraging.

All in all, these 30 minutes showed, could have shown to anyone doubtful,  that social media are different and can be used in ways quite different from traditional media:

“I think that social networks, like Facebook, are the future. It is a direct form of communication (…) today you have talked to an MEP.. . and I have talked to a lot of young people from all over Europe.That’s perfect!”, wrote Emilie Turunen.

Before this chat experiment, we had pondered for a while where to take our Facebook page next, and how to explore the potential for two way communication further.

After all, so far the page had been primarily a channel of information provided by us, staff of Parliament’s communication department, to people out there on Facebook. It had also developed into a platform for all those interested and keen to discuss all things European with people from all over the continent. Not little, but not more either.

Our Facebook “fans” knew and know that the European Parliament is not its communication department:  the Parliament is first and foremost its members.

In the end, our Facebook “fans” knew and know that the European Parliament is not its communication department:  the Parliament is first and foremost its members, the people that hammer out resolutions and legislative amendments, and vote on them.

Hence the conviction that if our page really is to become “two way”, interactive and participatory we  have to engage MEPs systematically and often. The “chat” is just one way of doing that, and we are trying to come up and try out other means and ways (and new ideas are always welcome).

To Emilie Turunen will always belong the honour and the glory that she was the first – although, it must be said that, if we had turned to other MEPs, many more would have volunteered, probably. But the fact that she was the same generation as most of our Facebook fans just seemed both appealing and at the same time a risk limiting strategy.

Next is, this Tuesday night at 18:00, MEP Catherine Trautmann. This is another first, in this case the first “rapporteur”, meaning the member who is responsible for steering an issue through Parliament and to negotiate with the Council.

Ms Trautmann signs responsible for the EU telecom package agreement. She secured an agreement that came pretty close to what MEPs had requested, in a surprise vote before the elections, in order to set very clear limits for companies, authorities, and national law makers, when it comes to cutting people off from their access to the web. Serious stuff..  and hence this chat probably is politically at least as much reason for us to be nervous and for everybody else to be there, on our Facebook page.

Facebook was to announce that for the first time they were making profit and that users would soon be able to phone their 300 million Facebook friends for free via the site.

I also learned during the week that the German site AutistVZ.de was launching an international version called autistbook.com – “Autistbook helps you stay disconnected from your friends in your virtual life and be left alone”.

A cartoon by our Czech editor Pavel

As I said, it was a plenary week. Plenary weeks are not like other weeks. During plenary weeks we are busier, and our PC’s and internet connections slower.

This week it was worse. Each time I started Word in the morning (or in the afternoon for that matter) I saw “auto recovery files” from the last crash of the application, and Word asked me whether I want to look at them.

This functionally didn’t spare me the anger and frustration when I thought I had lost my almost finished story on solar power from African deserts and the Nabucco pipeline (that’s what we call ‘angled’)  just before calling it a day at around 8 pm.

Patience is being able to take a coffee in order to wait for a white frame miraculously somehow turning into something with content – or until you are told that “this application is not responding”.

But it did save the energy story, so I got to appreciate the ingenuity of Microsoft folks (after all, when my I-Touch freezes I do have to restore I-tunes and all the music and other files with it…).

Patience is being able to wait for a few minutes until a white frame somehow miraculously turns into something with content – or until you are told that “this application is not responding”.

But the IT guys did tell us that they were investigating the matter.

Plenary weeks are different also for our Facebook page (and this is what I was going to write about).

I have come to regard parliament’s Facebook page as my adopted baby over the past five months – having looked after it since it was a week old.

A baby, by the way, that seems to be able to walk on its own in the meantime. But as with all children – it becoming autonomous is sometimes more difficult for the parents than for the kid itself. I am trying to prepare myself for the day of separation.

Never mind, back to the Facebook paradox and the plenary: What is great about Facebook, is that you get immediate results. You’re posting something, and bang, a few seconds later you see the first “likes”, and comments coming in if the subject is emotive enough or if one of our 55,000 fans makes an outrageous enough comment.

I remember during election week-end being stunned by the fact of just how many people are on Facebook on a Sunday morning.

But what should we conclude from that? Be happy with our 55,000 fans and for the rest just shut up?

Yet a paradox was striking, especially during the calmer times after the election: When I posted something new, the number of fans actually decreased. Not by large numbers, but by up to ten or twenty fans. And it happened as immediately as the “likes” were coming in on the best posts.

In a way this is logic: A post would make people realize that they have subscribed to our page, and if they cannot be bothered, the just get rid of us.  On the other side, as long as we stay quiet, it doesn’t make much of a difference to the user whether he or she is our “fan” or not.

But what should we conclude from that? Be happy with our 55,000 fans and for the rest just shut up? Hardly a reasonable choice. It would somehow defy the purpose of the page.

The bad news about last plenary was this: The number of fans we lost on the way, over the five months, crossed the ten thousand mark. 10,000 lost souls for the European cause!

Should we have posted less, or different? Less informal, more formal? Should we have censored more posts (we hardly did)? Choke off the “Vaclav Klaus appreciations society” (one of our early “fans”)? Or reinvented him when he went quiet? We will never know.

Yet the plenary week which started with this sorrow date, and which apart from JM Barroso did “not exactly rock” (Western Balkans: 36 likes, 11 comments;  SWIFT debate 43 likes, 10 comments…), ended with encouragement:

It proved what I had observed a number of times. Even if people leave our page immediately after a post, when and if there are heated discussions ensuing and many “likes” are posted, with a bit of a delay the number of fans begins to grow again, making good the initial loss (certainly because friends of our fans become aware of the page, and join perhaps to engage in the discussion).

The plenary week ended with a post about Parliament criticizing the draft Lithuanian child protection law which is to prohibit “dissemination to minors of information whereby homosexual, bisexual or polygamous relations are promoted”. This post, illustrated with the film poster of Brokeback Mountain, drew 101 comments and 356 likes, and more than 100 added fans over the week-end that followed.

PS: and what about the future?

There are reports about people banning Facebook from their (virtual) life. Yet the number of new users still seems to be much bigger than that of the quitters.

And I have witnessed a colleague telling me a couple of months ago that he quit Facebook. Last week I saw him back with a status update, about something he read years ago during university on a bench…

There seems to be no day going by without another company, non-profit or media organisation starting a Facebook page and I see myself becoming a fan or supporter of this or that, basically in order to get information in my daily Facebook feed, it becoming in a way what Igoogle aims to be.

I, for one, am not convinced that this means Facebook digging its own grave, as others have argued.

When we started the European Parliament Facebook page in April, we weren’t exactly the first ones – in fact one of our informal benchmarks was: “as many fans as Doctors without borders would be nice” (the Director); we achieved that (but they are close to overtaking us again).

Still, we were a bit ahead of most of the crowd, and more or less everybody, including myself, was surprised how well it worked, not only in terms of the growth of the fan community but also in terms of how well people engaged in discussions.

Therefore it is probably quite natural that others, especially those involved in EU communications, want to hear “how we did it”. So the boss and his deputy and myself we are giving presentations here and there.

I do feel a bit out of my depth talking about communicating with future generations.

Sometimes I am not sure whether we really can deliver what we’re asked for: This week I am supposed to give an input on “IT tools for future generations”.

While I made a great communication effort when our colleagues’ three recently born babies where over in Rue Montoyer for a drink last Friday, I do feel a bit out of my depth talking about communicating with future generations.

It also makes me wonder whether I should introduce my almost three year old son to the wondrous world of Twitter and Facebook, lest he’ll be growing up on the wrong side of the digital divide (and that after he made his first appearance on youtube within a day after his birth!).

As far as Parliament’s Facebook page and the future of our other social media activities are concerned, we will do what bureaucrats and other sensible people do: we’ll have a workshop to figure it out.