I’m honoured to work at this project, and I want to invest myself to make it bigger, nicer, and more powerful. It is a lab of experimentation and creativity, as it tests the potential (and pushes the limits) of institutional communication. Nowhere else, as far as I know, there is a community from so many different countries discussing political issues among them.  I was literally touched by the post on Thailand, when we talked about the riots in Bangkok. Some Thai people commented on it and many, many Europeans expressed them their solidarity and their sorrow, but also discussed the political situation there.

With over 76.000 fans, each post seen at least 100.000 times, and over 1.000 interactions per week, I think we shouldn’t be shy and say that this is one of the most successful experiences of communication on EU affairs ever.

Football time: the genius of Fred "en jouant avec son 'toshop"

Positive feed-back

In fact, we don’t need to auto celebrate ourselves, because we have a lot of positive feed-back, from inside and outside the House.

The other EU Institutions consider us frontrunners, and want to exchange experiences. The last example: a communication officer from EuropeAid at the Commission said he is “a big fan of the Facebook editorial team of the Parliament” and he would like to share with us some best practices.

After the chat with Heidi Hautala on human rights on Facebook, her assistant wrote to me that the results were “very impressive” and that the MEP “was very happy to participate and would do it again for sure :)”, encouraging us to “continue the excellent work!”.

FB fans appreciate our work, and they expressed it many times. Just over the last week, Marcello Toni thanked us for organising the chats, Tremopoulos Michalis encouraged us to “keep up the good work!!”and Mark Valdam said he likes “funny organisations like the EP :-))”.
…and some secrets to reveal
So far so good. Of course we can do much better, and I’ll write another post on what we can and should do in the future. For the time being, just two little confessions.
1) It is a serious thing – When “the pillar” left, I didn’t sleep for one week. I was given more or less informally the responsibility of coordinating the magic Facebook team, and this gave me a good dose of stress. The page took off and grew thanks – among others – to the creativity, restless effort and “geekiness” of Christian. I don’t know if I can keep up, but I will do all my best because I believe that this communication platform has a great potential to get Europe a little bit closer to citizens, but also to get citizens closer to European decision makers, and maybe most important, to get Europeans closer to each other.
2) But you don’t have to take yourself (and the others) too seriously. Do you know how the best posts that we publish see the light? Normally we exchange tonnes of emails, and at some point somebody comes up with a funny, sometimes hilarious email, that the others – crazily enough – take seriously. And then it goes on Facebook and gets a lot of comments and “likes”: the magic of Facebook!

For me, the important thing is to keep this spirit alive and…enjoy your work!

Is he our new guru?

The meeting was, in my opinion, very interesting since the guy knew very well what he was talking about and gave straight answers to the questions we brought up – even if he was perhaps a tad less unambiguous on privacy issues. But I won’t blame him, he was representing his company, was up front about that and we shouldn’t forget it. He gave useful insights on how Facebook is going to develop, what other institutions do and what we, the European Parliament, could do to improve our Facebook-presence.

I picked up some facts and statistics to give an overview of where we stand in the Facebook-galaxy (some of them come from our boss, Steve).

I was sitting next to Fred, our graphist, during the meeting... This is the way he takes notes. Well, my notes are so boring compared to that...

We can be proud of what we do on social media, for sure:

• As far as we can tell, the European Parliament is Europe’s highest ranking public political institution on Facebook
• The European Parliament page brings together the largest online community interested in EU politics – the second one being an unofficial EU page with about 43 000 fans.
• In the world rankings of public political institutions on Facebook, the European Parliament seems to be second only to the White House
• The European Parliament is the indisputable world leader in the use of Facebook by a parliamentary institution

But, nevertheless, we shouldn’t congratulate ourselves too much and forget going on… because our 75 000 fans are nothing compared too:

• 272 000 on the Democracy UK page, which was launched to debate political issues at a national level.
• 455 000 fans/friends of all MEPs on Facebook (It’s even probably more than 500 000 now)
• 9.3 millions fans for Obama
• 9.6 millions fans for Lady Gaga
• 400 million Facebook users worldwide
• 500 million EU citizens
• 500 billion minutes spent on Facebook every month in the world

Are social media reserved for young people? © European Parliament / Pietro Naj-Oleari

The use of social media has been very much discussed during the seminar. It shows that it has become unavoidable. I can remember another seminar about one year ago, when I arrived in the web communication team. It was very complicated to convince our colleagues from other units that social media are not a useless tool for a few geeks. Social media were just out of the debate – “Why should we discuss it, it has no power and the European Parliament doesn’t have anything to do with it!”

I wouldn’t say that the situation is 100% different today, but I see an improvement. People don’t question the use of social media any more – even if they still question their utility and outreach. In my opinion, it means that social media have become an integral part of the European Parliament’s communication toolbox. The work done during the elections campaign was fruitful. Some colleagues still don’t believe in what we do, but at least they accept that we do it and see it as a (minor) communication channel. The next step will be to convince them of the incredible power of social media.

Social media will never replace traditional communication methods. A good conclusion because everyone can understand what he/she wants to understand.

Social media: who's in favour, who's against? Vote during our directorate seminar. ©European Parliament / Pietro Naj-Oleari

Social media will never replace traditional communication methods, they’re just aside these. That was more or less the conclusion of the seminar. A good conclusion because everyone can understand what he/she wants to understand.

And I want to hear a positive sign in this conclusion. Our hierarchy doesn’t want to hurt our old-fashioned colleagues but they want us to keep going.

If young people are the future of Europe, then social media are very important – not only for the European Parliament or for communication purposes, but also for the sake of the European democracy. Because press releases, traditional websites, newspaper articles and open air events will never reach this particular audience at a European level. Is Facebook going to be the beginning of a true European public sphere? Let’s hope it will be the conclusion of next year’s seminar…

Open days are always a great time – you can visit the buildings, meet the political groups, discuss with civil servants. You can learn more about the European Parliament and catch some behind the scenes (and the screen in our case) pieces of information. If you haven’t tried the live translation booth, you can’t really say you understand the challenge of multilinguism.

Open Day on May, 8th in Brussels.

The EP Web team will be on the third floor of the main building. We will hold a live-chat on our Facebook page with Belgian Green and Vice-President of Parliament, Isabelle Durant, starting at 1630.

We expect you. Oh, and if you’re in Luxembourg or in Strasbourg, there are Open days as well. Check this page for all details.

IS IT an addiction?! Thanks to Fluxy for the pciture on Flickr @ http://bit.ly/brf29N

I considered myself a “frequent social media user”, with some incipient risk of addiction. Since I read this blog from tech company Retrevo that relieved me. I’m NOT in the top risk category. Apparently, I don’t present the most visible signs of what researchers call “obsession with checking in with their social media circles throughout the day and even the night”.  

Believe it or not, the most dangerous symptom of the syndrome, according to scientists, is interrupting sexual activity (or, as Retrovo delicately phrases it, “intimate moments”), to check your Facebook or Twitter account. According to Retrevo, 11% among young users (under 25) do it regularly. Yes, that’s right, check their fourth chart, third green column from the left… My theory “the youngest, the best” is totally in crisis now.

Another bad sign is if you check your account(s) as soon as you wake up in the morning, sure that there will be somebody even more zealous than you who already posted something. This is a very contagious virus, since it strikes 48% of social media users. Not me.  I’m the kind of girl that avoids any interaction with the world (real or virtual) before 9.00h.

But then, it comes to the third, unmistakable symptom: are you ready to interrupt a dinner for an electronic message? YES! Yes, I am! I am able to start a 2 hours conversation on the phone while starting to eat and I completely forget about my dinner. But then the phone is quite old school isn’t it? I mean, I wouldn’t consider it as “social media”, but more as “social life” addiction.

Naturally, all this left me burning with curiosity… I started to wonder if my colleagues were those kind of very bad addicts, or just we all belong to the old school. Here the result of my Flash Survey 19-04-2010.

Sex and the ex

Definitely happy to discover that the majority of us don’t open Facebook during our “intimate moments”. Only one admits to having had “a chat” while making love.

Worth a mention, the case of “an ex insisting on checking if she got a text to her phone during sex”: maybe a sufficient reason to break up. (ed. How reliable is such information about an ex, I wonder?)

Otherwise, numbers talk clear: we are below the average, with 14 out of 15 answering an unambiguous “NO” to the question.

Night-book?

Unit below the average also there, but with some more positive answers: 1/3 of us check Facebook “during sleepless nights”, when they wake up (no Dan, not everybody does!), or before going to bed. It is, surprisingly, a 80% male majority. Maybe girls have something better to do at night?

Ex are recurrent presences in this poll: “My ex was sticking to Facebook as soon as she woke up. And I would have killed her!”. Poor guy… Take comfort from your colleague who had to deal with the sex-SMS-ex.

Dinner and phone, a popular combination

1/3 of us check Facebook “during sleepless nights”, when they wake up, or before going to bed.

Yes, we’re definitely the old school. Most of us allow interruption of dinner by the phone, but internet is not mentioned at all: we don’t have “our computer at the dining table”.

Some people “try to avoid it” (the phone), meaning that it’s a very frequent practice. Only 5 say a convinced “NO”, whereas the others – knowing that they could be judged under the Fine Dining Etiquette rules – answer a timid “no, unless…”.

No ex this time, but a very liberated family: ” I was always thought those families that wouldn’t answer the phone during dinner were strange. Would they rather have the phone ringing off the hook than answering?!”

And now comes the best…

Eh eh. You thought you were sane, didn’t you? That, despite the hours spent in front of the screen, all the pictures of your school mates you have been browsing, the dangerous chats with the ex, despite Twitter and MySpace entering your adult life, YOU are still immune. I did. Till I got at the end of the article:

“56% of social media users need to check Facebook at least once a day. Even more impressive are the 12% who check in every couple of hours”

Every couple of hours??? What if it’s every couple of minutes??? My god…THAT’s a SYMPTOM! Unless, unless…you have a good excuse…a good excuse like

“I use it for work”

And, uff, I have it. Do you?!

The network is spreading

We don’t claim the scientific method or the statistical sophistication of Fleishman Hillard, but we have some rough and ready figures on how many MEPs are using social media – and it seems the numbers are well up since the elections. Doubtless increasing every day as well…

So, here we go:

Twitter

We found 230 MEPs with Twitter feeds.  That’s just over 31% of the membership of the EP. Collectively, they have over 114,000 followers.  If you want information on who is most followed, most active, etc., the euro-twitter aggregation site europatweets.eu offers some statistics (for which I take no responsibility).

Twitter is of course currently having another of its moments in the limelight, thanks to its role in helping people deal with myriad difficulties caused by the air traffic ban (see Tibo’s post mentioning this and his praise for Eurocontrol’s exemplary efforts on Twitter), and many MEPs have been using their Twitter feeds to tell stories of travel disruption, seek/give information or occasionally vent some frustration.

Facebook

A majority of MEPs have Facebook profiles! We found 401, that’s 55% of them. That’s a comfortable co-decision qualified majority… Unlike Fleishman Hillard, we haven’t got the research firepower to try to assess “extensive” users of social networks, but I think we can assume that the total we found represents a significant increase over the 33% who “used social networks extensively” before the elections.

A majority of MEPs have Facebook profiles! That’s a  qualified majority.

Altogether, and very interestingly for anyone thinking in terms of a burgeoning EP online community, these members have well over 450,000 fans, but, of course, fairly spread out between them.  (We couldn’t help noticing though that almost 90,000 of the total were fans of just two members, but otherwise the numbers are quite even.)

Facebook is the social media platform which seems to offer us the greatest possibilities at present. The number of fans (or, as it now says, “people who like this”) of the EP Facebook page is growing steadily, and stands at 66,640 at the beginning of the day I write this, which also happens to be the page’s first birthday! We are also seeing an increasing level of interaction on the page from fans, and, it is good to observe, from MEPs who wish to join in the debates they see occurring there.

Personally, I can’t find anyone else in the EU institutional framework, or in the wider “official” European parliamentary world, who has built up a number of fans approaching this. (That said, I am not going to compare the page with, say Britney Spears or Barack Obama – 2.6 and 8.0 million fans respectively – but that’s different, right?) So, perhaps, embryonically, the EP Facebook page stands as good a chance as anyone at offering one place where the mythical European public sphere to start taking shape online. Now, moreover, that we know about all those members – and all their fans – it seems all the more clear that the time has come to start getting serious about developing the links and interaction between them all, and maybe creating a kind of institutional hub for their conversation.

But that is another, very interesting, story and doubtless material for many more posts in the future. Back to business.

Blogs

Last in our research, we found 282 MEP bloggers, which is about 38%. I admit to wondering whether we found everything, but do note that the FH study had MEP “extensive” bloggers at 24%.

****

MEPs are increasingly engaging via social media. This must have momentous implications for our own institutional online strategy in the future.

So there you go, just some quick figures. Many thanks to the doughty trainees for their valuable efforts on this. As I said, I don’t pretend it is “scientific” research and I am going to be cautious about getting into more detail, which might be rather spurious. The key thing is we know that, yes, MEPs are increasingly engaging via social media, that a critical mass is surely being reached and that this will have momentous implications for our own institutional online strategy in the future. More anon, no doubt.

This is more or less mirrored by my use of the internet, thriving with billions of pieces of information, all linked together, sometimes without any logical scheme, and it’s easy to get lost. On time I was looking at the Napoleone Bonaparte page on Wikipedia and ended up reading about projects for the fourth generation nuclear power plants.

Let’s be honest: with all its mind-bogglingly possibilities, internet is anyway just another place to muck about. It’s always the same old story: the telephone allows you to communicate with people and hear their voices from all over the world, but then you will probably just call your buddy who lives two miles away and comment on the latest football match.

Today, Facebook is the most accessed website in the world, more than the Holy Google itself: it looks like people just can’t go on with their lives without knowing what pudding your cousin’s best friend’s brother in law ate this morning or what incredible, uberfun party your ex attended (and of course you weren’t invited to).

It’s really about our own nature: since the stone age and before those nice hairy ancestors of ours loved to live in small groups, communities, and now that we shave and our frenetic lives have cut out most of the leisure time, it’s just normal for technology to come in our aid providing us with new means to interact with people. I mean, of course nothing can compare to hanging out with your buddies for a beer, or dating your girlfriend, but in our fast paced life is good to be able to stay in touch with friends everywhere without too much of a hassle.

This however generated an unsettling issue: internet addiction. We have actual rehabilitation centres bristling with poor souls who are desperate for their internet fix. Twitter, Facebook, mySpace, Second Life: these are the new drugs of the third millennium. These addicts lose their jobs, their friends and give up on their real life in favour of a fake one where they can be someone else, erasing all the problems and not worrying about any consequence.

The question is: what’s the boundary between healthy and distorted? How can someone find out if he has a problem? How is it possible to help?
As always, education is probably the best way of dealing with these problems. In the globally connected world of today, kids (and adults as well) should be addressed with these issues, explaining how serious can be the consequences of an obsessed relation with the web. Family and friends can also provide invaluable aid to help those who already find themselves stuck in this vicious circle.

So, in the end, do I believe in those e-things?
No, I don’t believe in them and I don’t think they are as life-enhancing as they pretend to be, but I still take advantage of using them because they can be useful, and because with such small time to muck about, being a geek can just be hard at times.

Ok, now let’s twitt a bit more about going in the footsteps of Sakharov Prize winners of 2009, couple of days before the award.  

Kremlin

 Last-minute surprise visa on Friday, call to one of Moscow’s hotels, desperate efforts trying to find warmer coat and boots in Brussels right before leaving… No chance of sleeping during the night flight to Moscow.  

In focus: Oleg Orlov

Young, strict, but in the end helpful immigration officer filling in a form for me. Critically thinking bright taxi driver and nice hotel staff not charging me for an extra (previous) night. 

 Some sleep, a hasty steps past the Kremlin crossing the Moscow river to the press conference during the Conference ‘Sakharov’s Ideas Today’.

St. Basil's Cathedral

Catching the legendary Lyudmila Alexeyeva and Sergei Kovalev for couple of quotes. Chatting with journalists from grani.ru and Interfax while finally getting something to eat. 

Sergei Kovalev

Passing Lubyanka (ex-KGB building); hearing a familiar French accent when asking the way while searching for the Human Rights Centre Memorial.  

Seeing the courageous people risking their lives when doing their everyday work. Intensive Facebook chat (huge thank you to Maria for help!) with Oleg Orlov, leaving you extremely exhausted, but happy. 

Oleg Orlov and Lyudmila Alexeyeva

A sip of an excellent Caucasian cognac while hearing an account of  Memorial staff on being questioned by authorities the same day. Conversation with Katia who’s going to study in (…surprise) – Brussels. 

A very rewarding interview with Oleg Orlov and its hasty translation into English before everyone leaves the office. Dead-cold walk through the streets of Moscow, with hot bath at the hotel saving me from „permafrosting“.  

Sorry for 11 twitts packed in one text. Warning: twitting and writing synopses can make your language terribly telegraphic :)  

Special thanks to Oleg, Maria, Tatiana, Aleksandr, Jan, and everyone in Memorial for the friendly atmosphere and sharing their office with me for half a day. Big TNX to Anete, Christian, Rafa, Evita, Tibo, Steve and the whole Webteam for making it happen ;)  

Golden quotes:  

Taxi driver no 1: “Until this country starts producing something, it will go nowhere”  

Lyudmila Alexeyeva: “It is not awarded to me, but rather to all of us, especially those, who have lost their lives for the cause. If they were alive, they would be happy”   

Sergei Kovalev: Russia is currently a stumbling block in the way of international progress. It’s not alone; some other countries are also “splendid” enough.  

Oleg Orlov: “Sometimes you feel that you are scooping the sea with a spoon”  

Taxi driver no 2: “Airports, hotels, nightclubs, you wouldn’t service them without payoffs to gangs”  

@ the Airport café: “Man, move to another café. They sell the same stuff there, I’m busy”