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Digital minister quits UK government – by posting on Twitter

It’s been a dismal week for the British Government. The European elections will see a the tide turn against the ruling Labour party, and as the newswires saturate with talk of cabinet coups, party lines being broken and the parliamentary party in disarray, one minister chose to resign – through Twitter. Tom Watson, minister for digital engagement released the news of his resignation to ‘followers’ on Twitter. It’s a fitting channel for the government’s digital strategist who wrote online "I promised, Twitter friends, you'd get it first”

Follow Tom Watson: http://twitter.com/tom_watson

June 08, 2009 |

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Milestones

  • Broadband battle with US UK penetration of fast broadband connections slips ahead of US for first time.
  • Silver surfers swell Almost two out of every three of those coming up to retirement in the UK are online; double where the UK was in just 2001
  • 9% of China online And with vast growth rates to match it's not hard to understand why every dot com is looking East right now.
  • Blogtastic 1 new blog created every second as blogging goes mainstream.
  • The magic billion Crossing the threshold of '1 billion people' now online worldwide.
  • Beethoven rocks the house 1.3m downloads of Beethoven tracks, making him 1-9 in the download chart. Thanks to BBC Online the stereotype of music being just for kids gets blown apart.
  • Ebay addicts More than £4bn traded on eBay here this year, accounting for 1.3% of UK sales and an average of £3,000 per trader; latest news – the tax man’s interested in a slice!
  • Broadband Britain Finally broadband home access outweighs dial-up, but spare a thought for the poor folks still on dial up.
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  • "The future of advertising is the internet"
    Bill Gates 27/10/05
  • "It is happening now and is strong, rapid and large. [And there’s a] tremendous violence in traditional media as it continues to get displaced by digital."
    Sir Martin Sorrell, 27/10/05
  • "What is happening is a revolution in the way young people access news. Unless we awaken to these changes, which are quite different to those of 5 or 6 years ago, we will, as an industry, be relegated to the status of also-rans."
    Rupert Murdoch, American Society of Newspaper Editors, 13/04/05
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