Twitter Breaks (and makes) the News

This year, for the first time, I tweeted my way through a Toronto election.

From the long and winding line up that snaked its way around the Parkdale Public School gym, I tweeted that my neighbours (so handsome with their sleeves of tattoos and full beards) made for the most attractive ward members. When the line became exhausting, I tweeted that "Voting has grown tiresome". I tweeted that everyone in my ward should vote for Gord Perks and Smitherman, just before I was handed my ballot, "I am your Sherpa guide!" I typed furiously just a moment before I turned off my phone and searched for my pen.

I live across the street from Parkdale Public School and in the time it took for me to vote, run my ballot through the fax-machine-in-a-cardboard-box, get home and feed the cat, I had already read that Rob Ford was our new mayor.

I didn't find out by watching television news. I found out via Twitter.

So it should have come as no surprise to me that Rob Ford's marketing team would have tried to harness the power of this new marketing channel (a channel to which I am seemingly addicted) to try to sway the vote in Ford's favour. But today's news that a fake twitter account under the name QueensQuayKaren was created by the Ford team did come as a surprise. The handiwork of Fraser Macdonald, the deputy communications director for Ford's campaign, Macdonald posed as a woman living in the downtown core who supported George Smitherman. The 150 posts from QueensQuayKaren ranged from supportive of Ford, "I don't agree with him on everything, but the man speaks the truth", to downright offensive posts about Smitherman, calling him an "asshole".

It is now 3:10pm on Saturday and there have been 667 clicks on the blogTO article (more than 50 in the last hour) with accompanying tweets calling the move "dirty - but smart", "deceitful" and sometimes "heartbreaking".

As the day unfolds, more information about this fake twitter account is coming to light. Hour by hour more of the seamy details behind Ford's campaign are being revealed - and like the election results I'm getting all my updates via Twitter.