Launched yesterday (8/23/09), TweetProgress.us, already has nearly 1,200 registered progressives and counting. Created by Jim Gilliam (@jgilliam), Tracy Viselli (@myrnatheminx), Jon Pincus (@jdp23) and Gina Cooper (@ginacooper) as a directory for progressives on Twitter, TweetProgress.us is the newest phase in our efforts to better organize progressives on Twitter.
After first learning about how organized convervatives were on Twitter, under the #TCOT hashtag (Top Conservatives On Twitter), from my colleagues at the Center for American Progress, I launched the #TOPPROG hashtag to help better organize tweeting progressives. Within 24 hours, #TOPPROG cracked the top 20 hashtags and remained in the top 25 for a couple months.
Shortly after launching #TOPPROG, a few other progressives on Twitter, including Viselli and Jon Pincus (@jdp23) launched #P2, a shorter hashtag for progressive conversations on Twitter. As they evolved, #P2 has become the primary hashtag for conversations among progressives, while #TOPPROG is increasingly being used to bridge conversations with #TCOT and the libertarians' #TLOT.
It quickly became apparent that progressives, while not aggregating en masse under a single hashtag like conservatives, were very active on Twitter. #P2 and #TOPPROG, along with #ProgressiveTuesday, #EcoMonday, and #green, are among several hashtags being used to aggregate progressive-themed conversations.
With the arrival of TweetProgress.us, we now have a growing directory of progressives.
Jim Gilliam, who built TweetProgress.us after a brainstorming conversation with Viselli, also built Act.ly, an evolving platform for using Twitter to take grassroots action (initially, petitions). With these tools, along with TweetLeft.com, which feeds a live stream of #P2 Twitter posts, progressives are not only organized on Twitter, but well equipped.
If you know of more Twitter tools for progressives, please post them in the comments section below.