The Darlington Partnership has hired a teacher to be the north-eastern town's "Twitterer in residence", posting under the name TheDarloBard.
Mike McTimoney will use Twitter to inform people about news and events in Darlington. He has used social media for quite a while now, and is married (to another tweeter of course) with two kids. He loves to ride his bike, and he blogs about it.
His appointment as Darlo Bard is part of The Darlington Experiment, a "fun web-based 'experiment' to increase the positive perceptions of Darlington using social media sites". The website gives the residents tips on how to use social media.
The appointment has made headlines on the BBC and ITV, but normally TheDarloBard's tweets are meant to be for people living in Darlington and read like this:
Besides 15 minutes of fame, the sympathetic teacher is not getting rich. He is being paid £140 a year for tweeting. But having a Twitterer in residence might indeed be a way for local news that needs to be discussed.
