Mayoral campaigns hit Twitter-verse

Saskatoon’s mayor is going social.

Mayor Don Atchison (@AtchisonDon) has joined Twitter, posting his first message to the social media site and gaining around 200 followers by the end of the afternoon Tuesday.

“The thing with Twitter is it takes a commitment,” Atchison said. “We’re going to try hard to make sure we can be there on a daily basis just to talk about things that are interesting in the community.”

Atchison certainly won’t be tweeting from council meetings after criticizing some council colleagues for using the social media site and emailing during meetings, which he says goes against the spirit of open council meetings.

He said he’s going to try to make time during the day to send out updates, but doesn’t want to create expectations he will be sending out a stream of messages from events or “live-tweeting.”

Dozens of politicians have jumped on the social media bandwagon and they tend to fall into two camps — those who engage, giving the public a more intimate glimpse of their views, and those who play it safe and simply post reports on their workday tasks.

Vancouver’s Gregor Robertson (@MayorGregor has 25,700 followers), Calgary’s Naheed Nenshi (@nenshi has 64,000 followers) and Fredericton’s Brad Woodside (@bradwoodside 10,700 followers) are known for re- sponding to complaints from citizens and even engaging in heated debates. Premier Brad Wall (@PremierBradWall has 9,250 followers) sends out a steady stream of messages each day.

Atchison’s first official tweet used the hashtag for Saskatoon #yxe, the airport code, which allows people to quickly find all tweets related to the city. “Hello # yxe!” Atchison wrote. “This is great — live and in living colour on Twitter. Stay tuned for more exciting information.”

The only problem was Atchison’s account didn’t yet have a photo, which failed to upload. That fed speculation the account wasn’t really him.

“We weren’t trying to be creating mystique,” he said.

Twitter was a nerdy novel- ty the last time Saskatonians chose a mayor and council, but looks to be prime campaigning ground heading toward the Oct. 24 civic vote. Former mayor Henry Dayday, the only other declared mayoral candidate, joined Twitter on Tuesday and his website — complete with his platform — went live.

Dayday said he’s used Twitter before, but needs to “refresh my memory.” He said he expects to interact and engage with voters.

“I see it as useful for someone like myself who has a low-budget campaign,” Dayday said. “When you run a low-budget campaign, that’s an excellent way to go. … It gives a chance to say something you can’t deliver on a pamphlet.”