Tweets beckon Democrats to Charlotte

Charlotte staged a hijacking of sorts on Twitter yesterday, one organizers hope will help convince the Democratic National Convention to come to the Queen City in 2012. The idea came from Desiree Kane, director of community over at CLTBlog. With the city suffering from teacher layoffs and bank cutbacks, she figured the convention's multi-million economic impact would be just what Charlotte needs.

She came up with the idea for a Twitter “hashtag party,” where Charlotte Twitterers would, from 10 a.m. to noon Thursday, effectively hijack the hashtags Democratic National Committee members use in their Tweets. (For non-Twitterers, a hashtag is a keyword attached to the end of a Tweet, preceeded by the “#” symbol).

Members of the DNC, which is holding its summer meeting in St. Louis today, often use #DNC and #DNC10, so she and her collaborators urged local Twitterers to send out tweets including those hashtags and saying good things about Charlotte. They also added their own local hashtag, #CLT2012, so Charlotte folks could track the local tweets. Some 500 people got involved, Kane said last night. Search for #CLT2012 on Twitter, and you'll find, amid official-sounding DNC tweets about delegate selection rules and regional caucus meetings, a bunch of cheeky posts about the awesomeness of Charlotte. Among the reasons tweeted: salted caramel brownies 24 hours a day, great barbecue and 20 Chik-Fil-A restaurants.

The DNC won’t pick its city until later this year – Charlotte is vying against St. Louis, Minneapolis and Cleveland – but Kane feels good about the effort. “All I did was provide the vehicle, and the Charlotte Twitter community took hold of it,” she said. “It was an unbelievably positive outpouring of affection for Charlotte.”

For more info on Charlotte's bid, go to http://cltblog.com/series/clt2012 or the official site driving Charlotte's bid, http://charlottein2012.com.