C&A veep: Twitter "embedding" itself in policymakers' lives

Blogging on Tuesday's discovery that Twitter plans to hire a government relations specialist, Cassidy & Associates senior vice president Roy Temple predicted that lobbying efforts by new media firms may be much broader than that. 

"What this should tell others in Washington is that Twitter is determined to embed their tool into the lives of policymakers," he writes.

Rather than opting for a traditional lobbying strategy, "these companies instead make themselves indispensable to politicians, and try to bask in the glow of their helpfulness when it comes to getting their policy issues addressed," Temple said.

It raises some questions: Can lawmakers keep a wall between their reliance on applications and the lobbying efforts of the Internet companies themselves? In other words, when lawmakers rely on Google, does it help Google's public policy efforts? If so, why is it any different from lawmakers' decades-long reliance on services provided by, for instance, phone companies?