Creating an organized exchange of ideas (by using Twitter)

Dear reader,

while reading Discussing EU blogging and the unlinked EU blogosphere by Ron Patz the idea was born to speed up the process Bruegel blog wanted to inspire. From personal experience it is known that while in general European professors of economics know by and large their colleagues and their work they don't necessarily know if and when their counterparts in other countries decide to join Twitter and where/when they decide to publish a new piece in some European, American or Asian newspaper.

So it is more or less a matter of coincidence when economists come along other economists while browsing the net and a busy professor doesn't have time to search the Internet if one of his colleagues has written some new important contribution on an ongoing debate or he doesn't have time to spend and search Twitter on a daily basis if another economist he knows joined the 'club'. And it's even more impossible to find those maybe also important voices he so far doesn't know by name ! The author here also helped out when he knew that economists A had an interest in reading economists B. A and B didn't know that they both had a Twitter account and so the author who knew both introduced A to B. This 'method' is as inefficient as incredibly slow, maybe slow enough that before everyone knows the other, the eurozone crisis has been solved or the zone has seized to exist.


Solution:

There needs to be a central Twitter account which maintains some lists of accounts of economists wanting to contribute to the exchange of ideas. Maybe just one list is sufficient for the time being and later there can be 'spin-offs' where account A can be part of list A (EU economy in general) and B (Eurozone), +C (Eastern Europe) , +D (banking, Basel III), E (etc)  ...

example:
@WhelanKarl member of (@voxeu) lists:            viewed from @voxeu could look like this:
[X] All economists #voxall                                  @WhelanKarl, @_basjacobs, @haucap,@pdegrauwe
[X] Eurozone         #voxez                                  @WhelanKarl, @_basjacobs, @haucap,@pdegrauwe
[  ] Eastern Europe #voxeast
[X] banking, BaselIII, Target2#voxbnk,voxbasl    @WhelanKarl, @_basjacobs
[  ] EIB  #voxeib
[  ] WTO #voxwto
[X] Ireland  #voxirl                                            @WhelanKarl
[  ] UK #voxuk
[  ] Germany #voxger                                         @haucap 
[  ] Belgium  #voxbel                                         @pdegrauwe

In order to have one central 'starting point' the author here suggests that Twitter account @voxeu should administrate such a list , since they already publish many pieces of those individuals in question on their website. So many future participants of such an exchange do already know VOXEU and it can be assumed that they visit their website on a regular basis anyway.
So an 'advertisement' placed on their homepage would help to find many contributors also to this new Twitter list of 'economists channels'. So a new and rather fast exchange of international economists can be invoked and by offering a complete list of 'economists channels' also give the interested wider public audience to participate in this exchange of excellent ideas.
The launch of such a list maintained by VOXEU could be accelerated by compiling an initial list of known accounts and applicants who would like to be added can contact @voxeu easily also by Twitter.

Public lists can also be followed too, so there wouldn't even be a need for putting all members to own twitter account and it is always 'up to date' and complete.

Of course those lists could also be maintained by @prosyn or both  platforms.

[update]
Apr 2nd 2012 Hashtags ("#", e.g #voxtarget2) can be assigned by putting 1-n proposals for future discussions into the description of each list. By using hashtags Twitter allows to have 'chatrooms' (groups) where only those tweets appear in a common timeline which are tagged according to selection given. (for more details see Twitter help)
Apr 3rd 2012 HOW TO: Use Twitter Lists  
Apr 6th 2012 Follow on Twitter (a directory being compiled)
Apr 6th 2012 Blending Governance and Twitter (NYTimes)
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