Spaghetti Testing | Peter Smith

Screen grab of Statistics Canada's English Twitter account

Statistics Canada is about to start tweeting. The accounts @statcan_eng and @statcan_fra will begin posting links to The Daily starting tomorrow.

What’s the significance? The national statistical agency’s Twitter accounts have been live but inactive since late 2008 — and combined, they have amassed nearly 1500 followers without a single tweet. As far as I can tell, this is more than any other “corporate” Government of Canada presence in Twitter. A testament to StatsCan’s brand.

The agency issued two teaser tweets this afternoon. Here’s the first one, to alert people (and make the existence of the French account known).

From: @StatCan_eng
Sent: Jan 19, 2010 15:02

Thank you for following. Starting tomorrow we will be tweeting from this account and our French account @statcan_fra.

sent via web

On Twitter: http://twitter.com/StatCan_eng/status/795753821

And here’s the second one, which provides additional detail on what the contents of the tweets will be.

From: @StatCan_eng
Sent: Jan 19, 2010 15:23

On 20-Jan-10, StatCan will start posting major data releases from The Daily. Stay tuned for more. http://bit.ly/8Obdy7

sent via web

On Twitter: http://twitter.com/StatCan_eng/status/7958176789

Why The Daily? It’s the agency’s flaship communications vehicle — as such it makes sense to extend its presence into Twitter. Here’s the official “about” blurb:

The Daily is Statistics Canada’s official release bulletin, the Agency’s first line of communication with the media and the public. The Daily issues news releases on current social and economic conditions and announces new products. It provides a comprehensive one-stop overview of new information available from Statistics Canada.

I will be interested to see how this develops. How will StatsCan handle interaction? What about official languages? What corporate voice will be used? What’s been tweeted so far has given us some hints about these issues but we shall see.

Anyhow, well done Stats Can, happy tweeting!