After the last election, many conservatives understood that the movement had not progressed in its adoption of communication technology.  Already, some in the movement have begun working on grass-roots solutions to resolve the wide gap.  One project, Top Conservatives on Twitter, hopes to harness the power and reach of the social networking tool to organize its members more effectively:

This list was first placed on the web on November 28, 2008. In the short time since then, it has become a bit of a rallying point for conservatives on Twitter. I think all of us who are on the list can conceive of many additional ways to improve the list to strengthen and grow the conservative community on Twitter.

You must primarily tweet on conservative themes and cannot be merely a “campaign profile” “political office holder profile” or a “radio or television program or publication promotional profile” to be on this list. New participants are welcome. Just nominate someone you follow or yourself and show that you are primarily on Twitter as a conservative.

To put this list in context, you will note that the #100 most followed person on Twitter has 9,000 followers, so we have a lot of work to do !

How exactly will this work?  TCOT plans a series of Action Projects to attract and empower conservatives, keeping them constantly informed through Twitter, and presumably other tools as well.  One Action Project already begun intends to raise grass-roots efforts to challenge Democrats in every Congressional district in 2010:

“Operation Conservative Republican Majority 2010”

Description

One of the fundamental errors the Republican Party made in 2008, an error that it has been making for many election cycles, is that it failed to aggressively contest ALL 435 Congressional races. Indeed, of the more than 220 Democrat incumbent seats, Republicans took a hard run at less than two dozen. That left fully 200 uncontested Demoratic seats !

We are going to change that in 2010.

We are going to start now, identifying candidates who want to take on entrenched Democrats. We don’t care if you don’t have any money now. We don’t care if the polls say you can’t win. We know what no one else knows.

There are thousands of netizen-warriors and community servant leaders in every Congressional District today who are ready, willing, and able to help Conservatives Republicans win in that district. We all believe that the Constitution and a return to limited government is a higher calling we are willing to devote our time, effort, and energy to see happen.

We especially want young people, aged 23 to 35 to think about volunteering right now to work on this Action Project.

This Action Project will ultimately have related 435 Action Projects, 1 for each Congressional District.

Rob Neppell and Michael Leahy have partnered to launch this, and that’s good news for conservatives.  Rob knows how to build Internet efforts, and has worked for years to build on-line communities, first at Truth Laid Bear and then professionally at Kithbridge.  In fact, it’s going so well that Kithbridge needs an intern to help Rob keep these efforts in motion, so be sure to contact Kithbridge if you’re interested.

I’m interested in how these social networking tools can help organize the movement.  Newt Gingrich has done some parallel work at American Solutions already, and this could be more of a bottom-up approach.  I’ve spent the last couple of days updating my Facebook site and exploring Twitter to get a better idea of the power and potential.  I’m still no expert, but I’m definitely intrigued.

Update: How could I have forgotten the #dontgo Movement?  Be sure to check that out as well, with its 28,000 members.