Wordle creates “beautiful word clouds” (their words, not ours) based on a text or website that one inputs. It identifies the most often-used words and makes them larger to show their repetition.

What did Pottering talk to the European Parliament about?

Parliamentarian's favourite conversation topic.

Public Affairs 2.0 should also face up to it’s own obsession. We clearly like the European Parliament as much as Mr Pottering, but the words ‘European’, ‘digital’, ‘public affairs’ are about the same size as Fleishman-Hillard.

FH talks about MEPs, European, Parliament and FH

European Parliament, digital and public affairs will get another tick in the word count next week when we publish a report on the use of digital tools by MEPs.

It may be one too many glasses of champagne at this evening’s launch event at the Residence Palace, but we kind of like the new look European Voice paper and website. It’s at the very least a decent facelift for our favourite trade paper. The website has more than a hint of the Guardian Unlimited about it, but to be fair why reinvent the wheel. Especially if it’s a wheel that gets nominated for awards.

A slightly geeky web designer bloke (who we work with and love) pointed out that the “bevelled menu bar” is innovative in web design terms, which we take as a compliment as he did not design it. We were more interested that Tim and team are promising updates on the news as “we make it” (i.e. daily rather than every Thursday, assuming your EV is actually delivered on time) as well as policy sections featuring archived content. We also like the fact they’ve included a blog, something their parent publication has been pushing to good effect. It may get us actually reading the EV, rather than looking at who’s advertising in it!

As usual, the event was a great opportunity to meet competitors, talk shop and cringe at the back through Tim King’s somewhat laboured jokes. Thankfully there were some interesting people to talk to (other than ourselves), cute pics of a new born baby (that of the EV editor) and a decent band.

In any case, a good rebirth and a decent bash. Well done, EV team.

One question that occurs at the end of this post – why does the EPP insist on spending its money advertising to Brussels based lobbyists and communications people? After all, they must be the main audience for the EV’s website and paper. A subject for another post perhaps.

We have sought to keep it simple, so we’ve contrasted the traffic for the main three political European groups (sorry UKIP) since the last entry on the subject. Despite the prevalence of Socialist MEP bloggers it seems their group is a little bit behind in the video stakes.

You can also look at the cumulative numbers, which in the case above would show the ALDE with a commanding lead. Interestingly, once you have inputted the channels you can then drill down to see the breakout of traffic over time for individual videos on the channel. As we have done here for EUTube, which is the only one of the featured YouTube channels getting serious visitor figures.

Note that on Thursday last week the UEFA/Commission video on featuring armchair football, which incidentally is worth watching, managed to overcome our favourite “Come Together” Commission offering. A case of a vid going viral for a day – or simply lots of people at UEFA having a look? Finally, here is one for the MEPs, where iJules leads the field this week.

EU Institutions

• European Commission – sweaty from the sex sells success, they still lead the way in populating the web with EU content (nearly a million channel views and over 4,000 subscribers).
• European Parliament – one video and about as many regular visitors as this blog.
• Council - does anyone else see the irony in “Council Live“? In any case we couldn’t find the Council on YouTube but the Portuguese Presidency does have a library of press conferences available to download.

European Parliament Political Groups

• EPP
• PES
• ALDE

• UKIP - A small national party rather than a European parliamentary group, we grant you. Despite holding none too popular views in Brussels some of their videos make us chuckle.

Members of the European Parliament

• Richard Corbett MEP (PES, UK)
• Chris Davies MEP (ALDE, UK)
• Dan Jorgensen MEP (PES, DK)
• Syed Kamall MEP (EPP, UK)
• Jules Maaten MEP (ALDE, NL)

There is of course the question of how successful these efforts are in reaching out to potential voters, or even supporters, both on their own and relative to each other.

Happily, we have started to come across tools that will help us map the progress made such as TubeMogul. Once you register, for free, not only can you upload your video to multiple platforms at the click of a button but you can also compile and contrast visitor data over time for your video and that of others.

A visit to the US based Viral Video charts, who offer a tracking and analysis service for a fee to professionals as well as a chart of political videos, reminds us however that the online world can hinder as well as help our politicians.

Our top three European political video bloopers in reverse order:

3. Commission President Barroso comparing Europe to an empire

2. French President Sarkozy appearing to have had a little too much to drink (BTW – he had not)

1. Belgian politician and potential Prime Minister Yves Leterme singing the Marseillaise instead of the Belgian national anthem (BTW – clearly he was joking)

As Alex was packing his bags in preparation for the five hour (?) drive down the E411, some of us managed to sit this week out and only glimpsed the dizzy spire of the Cathedral from the autoroute on the return from our annual summer migration as we drove in the opposite direction. BTW – you may have noted the distinct lack of entries in recent weeks as we made mad dashes up, down and across Europe in search of sunshine and warmth. All things being equal (and cloudy), normal service is now set to resume.

It seems we owe our apologies to Alex for not including his own blog on our blogroll in the past. His EPP press release trumpets that he has blogged (in Finnish) for over four years, posted over a 1000 entries and gets over 1000 readers a day. All somewhat more impressive than our own humble efforts. However, as the only comment on his Economist entry appears to be from a voter celebrating the fact that the Parliament is made more ineffectual by the monthly commute, one has to wonder whether despite previous success Alex will be reconsidering his hope that “blogging in English for The Economist will encourage an even broader range of comments…”.

Of course such hopes could have probably been dashed at a glance through a click at Margot’s conversation (in English) with the citizens, most of whom seem to be at least slightly mad. Incidentally, thanks to Margot’s moderator for pointing out that she won’t be winding her blog down anytime soon. Some of us quite enjoy pictures of mooses and random reading recommendations – a true insight into a politician’s mind perhaps?

However, MEPs are plucky creatures (you have to be to shuttle back and forth from Strasbourg and Brussels) and it seems at least some of them are turning to the latest in digital to reach out to their voters and bypass traditional media.

The centre-right EPP-ED (Parliament’s largest political group) now runs its own “news channel” on its website, which is available on both your desktop and on your mobile phone via their .mobi site. In contrast with video offerings on the ALDE and PES sites, the news channel is a weekly news round up and not simply a video of the last group press conference, which is it seems the content of PES leader Martin Schulz’ podcast.

Over on YouTube, a quick search of European Parliament related content reveals a selection of videos featuring the usual ragbag of weirdos and clips from traditional media such as Euronews. The first MEP to appear is Dutch Liberal Jules Maaten, whose video postings feature everything from Bob the Builder to UK MEP Chris Davies (not rumoured to be a dab hand on the office computer) and some rather disturbing pictures of the adverse effects of tobacco smoke. While Jules’ YouTube postings have only caught the eye of two subscribers so far, he’s clearly caught the online bug as his website features not only video but podcasts, online polls and of course a blog.