December 15, 2009

Twitter Mini-Storms

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I have a Twitter feed that I update very rarely (though MoJo makes it look a little more active than it is by automatically creating a new tweet every time I publish a blog post).  Normally, I get maybe one or two new followers per day, but every once in a while I get a mini-storm of new follow requests.  This weekend, for example, I suddenly got several dozen for no apparent reason.  Why does this happen?

POSTSCRIPT: OK, I have it.  After several minutes of arduous research, it seems that at 6:16 pm on Saturday Matt Yglesias tweeted about my Matt Taibbi post.  At 6:17 pm I got a follow request, and over the next five hours I got 32 more.  So apparently Matt is the instigator here.

Anyway, my Twitter feed is at http://twitter.com/kdrum for anyone interested in following it.  But bewarned: I still don’t post much on it.

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This is how change happens.

One story at a time.

This investigative reporting takes time too. Months of research. Weeks of writing, editing, and fact checking—and putting together the photography, art, video, and audio that tell the stories in a new way, illuminating new perspectives and voices.

We can afford to take our time because we don’t report to oligarchs or corporations. We report to you, and for you.

And the stakes are high. Democracy is on the defense. We’ve been exposing corruption and scandal for five decades, and this is a pivotal moment in our country’s history. Will democracy prevail? We won’t wait for time to tell—independent journalism is essential for democracy, and we’ll keep doing our part to amplify the free press.

So, we’re asking: Will you join the fight? Mother Jones has been here for 50 years, and we need your support to fuel the future of investigative journalism. Mark our 50th anniversary with a gift of any amount.

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