How does Legislata compare to Twitter?
Twitter needs no introduction. It has been the central social media platform for politics since at least 2015 and we’ve spent plenty of time mining it over the past year for insights into how politics works.
Legislata, like Twitter, is a place for people to stay up to date with politics and to share information that matters in their network. So how does it differ and offer you something new?
Why Twitter became important
The importance of Twitter in politics has never been about its mass reach. An elected official trying to reach their constituents would be better served being on Facebook, especially since that’s where older Americans and likelier voters are.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/272014/global-social-networks-ranked-by-number-of-users/
https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2021/04/07/social-media-use-in-2021/
The reason Twitter has played a central role in politics has been that who is on it are those central to politics: elected officials, journalists, and activists.
In our research on who elected officials follow on Twitter, we have found that other electeds and journalists sit at the top of the list in every state and city. One state-level elected official told me that they follow journalists on Twitter because that’s how they keep up with the news - the journalists often know what’s happening before the electeds do and tweet it out quickly.
In many ways, political Twitter in a state acts as a large group chat among the political class. When it functions well, Twitter is a crowdsourced informational feed for a community, with the added ability for replies and responses from others. But it doesn’t always function well.
The pros and cons of Twitter
The cons are well-known to any user: trolls, bots, disinformation, and, now, the owner.
There have always been complaints and criticisms about Twitter, including regularly calling it a “hellsite” by those using it. Nonetheless, it was uniquely suited to politics:
Short-form text suited a business that had long communicated in headlines and soundbites.
It allowed immediate and frictionless broadcasting to a network.
Networks could be crafted by each user to keep up with what mattered to them.
Replies and quote-tweets allowed for a form of debate and discussion about topics.
However, it appears that, for at least some in the political world, that the costs no longer outweigh the benefits. Mastodon and Post.news have seen rapid growth, some writers are leaning into Substack or blogs, and other communities are forming on Slack or Discord.
We cannot know what the fate of Twitter will be, but any social media network is a fragile ecosystem that can rapidly unravel when it reaches a tipping point. Twitter may be more fragile than most since its importance was in being the main hub for those in the political ecosystem and a minimal number of defections can quickly hit a tipping point.
How Legislata differs
When you go to the posts page in a Legislata office, you’ll see something that looks like a social media timeline. You’ll be able to create posts to share with others and even create your own space where people can subscribe to you.
But as you look closer, you’ll see quite a few differences to Twitter.
First, there is no central repository into which every tweet is sent and then an algorithm decides what each user sees. On Legislata, you are a member of any number of “Offices”, which function like a Facebook Group, Slack Channel or Subreddit. Posts in that office stay there and you can only see posts in offices you are a part of.
This helps with managing the content you see and share. You are not being bombarded with what will make you keep scrolling. And you can differentiate what you post.
Perhaps you’re in the Massachusetts Office, a public space for those in the Bay State’s political world to share press releases and other statements. You’re also in an Office for your own organization, to help you keep track of meeting notes and memos. In your private office you may share drafts of a press release and then, when it’s done, share the final version in the public office.
Legislata can therefore act as a productivity app for an organization’s internal work and a way to keep up with its external stakeholders.
Second, each post in Legislata can be much longer than a tweets, to accommodate the kinds of statements we use in politics, and can be tagged with what it relates to. This could be a particular topic, like health care, or a bill pending in a State House or Congress. We maintain a legislative database for the app, so you can be sure that you’re tagging it with actual legislation, not simply a hashtag. Since most of what we write in politics is important because of the issues or bills it relates to, we offer the chance to link directly to those issues or bills.
Third, you can set up notifications on specific tags in specific offices. Maybe you care about housing in Massachusetts and transportation in New York. You can set up alerts for whenever someone in the Massachusetts office posts something with the tag “housing” and for when someone in the New York office posts something with the tag “transportation.” This allows you greater control over how you stay up to date and reduce the time scrolling.
Fourth, we will be posting information about politics in a number of states and Congress. This includes legislative updates, elected official tweet roundups, and press releases (each type varying between jurisdictions). So rather than just a social media app that lets people post their thoughts, it has the foundation of a bill tracker upon which additional information and context can be layered. It ensures that, regardless of how people express their thoughts, there is immediate value to the user.
What’s coming next
Our hope is that Legislata can serve as a parallel, more professional, and more informative place for the political Twitter of a community. We are not intending to be the next big social media site, and have no intention of stoking flame wars. Instead, we recognize that Twitter has not been used for everything political professionals need. It has been great to disseminate short pieces of texts or to keep up with what journalists in DC are discussing that day. It hasn’t been good for the kinds of information we often need for our work - what press releases are out there, who supports what, has that bill been announced in a committee, or the context needed to understand something.
We’re planning to introduce monetization and paywalls in 2023. Get in touch if that would be of interest to you. We’re also introducing a feature that lets you monitor an issue or create crowd forecasts. It allows you to turn your audience into a community or to communicate in numbers if that’s better suited to the question at hand.
You can, of course, sign up for free to get started or schedule a demo.