One other fault I see with using Twitter as hard data is your concern about Twitter hitting only a small portion of the population; that feedback on Twitter is self-selecting. In comparison, so are Town Hall meetings (usually the same people come to these events again and again, representing a small portion of the population). I think Twitter’s initial audience now is self-selecting (those who know how to use it and those who use it often), but current trends show that it’s use and reach is growing. They recently passed 300 million users worldwide (or to put in into perspective, one account for every US resident). In the long run, Twitter might represent a broader segment of the population than a meeting. Governments need to plan for that kind of representation.

I think Jennifer Cowley’s presentation about SNAP ATX demonstrated that there ARE clear means of analyzing and quantifying micro-blogging & social media participation.

The point of failure was getting government official buy-in. The officials had all of this wonderful detailed data, but did not use the data to make decisions. They didn’t understand the data; they didn’t trust the data; they thought the data came from only a very small segment of the population; they couldn’t verify that all tweets came from residents & thus, voters (really? can you verify that all participants at a public meeting are residents/voters?). My $0.02.