Bishop visits Twitter HQ as Aussie office planned

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blog The news that social networking platform Twitter is planning to open offices in Australia isn’t exactly new — in fact, it’s been rumoured all through 2012, with one concrete indication of its awareness of Australia being its move to open a dedicated local account for itself. This article in Mumbrella, published in October, details the plans. However, what is new is the Coalition’s engagement with Twitter. Late last week Deputy Opposition Leader Julie Bishop tweeted that she was visiting Twitter’s San Francisco headquarters, and further comments from Bishop also popped up in various media outlets (for example, see the Sydney Morning Herald’s story here):

Deputy Opposition Leader Julie Bishop said she understood the move was “imminent”. “That’s what they told us today — they’d be opening an office in Sydney,” she said. “Facebook has a presence in Australia and it’s clear Twitter is about to establish one.”

Most likely like most people in the technology sector, I don’t really expect Twitter opening an office in Australia to have much impact on its operations here. We’ll likely see a bit better engagement between the company and local law enforcement officials, and we’ll also likely see a concerted push by Twitter to engage with corporates on the advertising front (so, you know, that it can make money and stuff). We may also see the social networking site engaging a little more with the political process. But by and large it won’t be a huge deal — more of a token presence by the company. This is standard practice for many large tech multinationals operating in Australia.

4 COMMENTS

  1. I have no idea why anyone from the Opposition would visit Twitter seeing as there’s constant gags on their use of the medium. Add to this the complete contempt for anything technology related is palpable whenever they discuss broadband or the digital future of Australia.

    Knowledge is power, technology spreads knowledge, & the Opposition are afraid of losing power. Maybe if they didn’t spread as much FUD about tech I’d believe this wasn’t just another stunt designed to connect with Twitter users.

    • Well Facebook employ something like 1 person in Australia right?

      Maybe she wants to push this as an election priority so she can say that LNP care about getting people employed in ICT, after Twitter employ 1 person.

  2. I read the title first, thinking “wtf is the Catholic sending a Bishop to visit Twitter for?”
    Had to read through, and realise it’s only Julie Bishop.

    Politics in this case is kind of boring.
    The Twitter HQ isn’t an issue for the LNP.
    It’s getting their members to interact more with the public with Twitter.
    From what I’ve seen, Labor has a huge number of twitter accounts for individual members, all of which are active in some way.

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