UK First: Town Appoints an Official “Resident Tweeter”

A teacher has become the first person in the UK to be appointed as a “tweeter in residence” for a town.

Mike McTimoney, or @TheDarloBird, will use Twitter to keep the town on top of news and events in Darlington.

McTimoney, of the town’s Queen Elizabeth sixth form college, said: “I think it is great to be the UK’s first twitterer in residence and I hope other towns will follow suit.”

The appointment is linked to the Darlington Experiment 2.0 (Dx2), a wonderful website which hopes that aggregates all the media posted on the internet about the town from other sites such as Flickr, YouTube, Twitter and Facebook, into one place.

Andy Atkins, a member of the Darlington Partnership which is funding Dx2 and McTimoney’s £140-a-year salary said: “More and more people are communicating using digital and social media and we want to reach as many people as possible.