15 September 2014

Kasparov's Campaign: Twitter & Facebook

Continuing with Garry Kasparov's travels during his unsuccessful bid for the FIDE presidency, in the most recent post I looked at news from his Campaign Site. The last two resources listed in Kasparov TMER: Next Steps were Twitter (Teamkasparov) and Facebook (Kasparov2014).

I can't comment on the usefulness of these resources to Kasparov's campaign while it was in full swing, but I can comment on their usefulness to the historical record of the campaign. In a phrase: not particularly useful. Both resources are mainly for sharing links, photos, and an occasional video -- interspersed with (largely) repetitive campaign messages. All this serves as a vehicle for gathering (largely) light comments in the form of 'Retweets' and 'Likes'. New, original content is (largely) absent. For example, here are links to a relevant June event:-

Twitter:

  • Jun 19: Lawmakers' strategic moves at Congressional Chess Tournament: http://videoshare.politico.com/ …
  • Jun 18: Kasparov will join a bipartisan Congressional Chess Tournament with the Congressional Chess Caucus this morning! http://www.washingtontimes.com/ …

Facebook:

  • June 18: Congressional Chess Tournament [photos]

There are other relevant pages on both Twitter and Facebook -- like Kasparov's personal pages -- but I didn't spend much time on them while preparing today's post. Twitter limits the number of past tweets it displays (to around 500?), making it even less useful to the historical record. Following are a few more Facebook Kasparov2014 posts I noted:-

  • February 5: "My visit to Nigeria has yielded positive results in many ways."
  • May 1: Photo report of Garry Kasparov's campaign for FIDE presidency.
  • May 5: Already on the move again in Africa!
  • May 6: Garry handing over a cheque to Tan Dri Ramli Ngah Talib...

As for Twitter Teamkasparov tweets, I used the same technique already seen in Chessbase.com posts on Kasparov, and created an external page, Twitter.com tweets by Teamkasparov.

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