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Introducing A More Effective Way To Bitch At Your Senator or Congressman – GovLuv

December 12, 2009 by Elias Shams 2 Comments

I had dinner with the Executive Director of Open Forum Foundation, Wayne Burke in downtown, DC last night. I also had a pleasure of meeting with his team during the dinner. Great projects they got going on. The most interesting one called GovLuv which is supposed to connect government representatives and citizens through Twitter.

Not quite sure yet, but depending on the execution and direction of the company, it has the potential to become a massive micro social networking site for the citizen and their reps in the government. If it flies, I guess the model can be applied for any other democratic country. I just can’t see how it’s going to work for countries like China, Iran, North Korea and others like them. They recently launched the beta version of the site. GovLuv, in a nutshell creates a direct line of communication between you and your senator or congressman via Twitter so you can do all your bitching to them effectively. Boy! Didn’t we need something like this while Bush was in power. Not that they would listen anyway.

Technically, GovLuv is a new Twitter-based tool that provides a geographically-organized directory of political and governmental leaders along with their Twitter handles. It also allows politicians to identify tweets from their constituents. It is billed as a way for “connecting government representatives and citizens”, for a “more productive two-way dialogue”.

It is pretty easy to use. Simply, enter your full address which helps them to find the right representative for you. Then, you can create a Twitter list of your representative which instantly connects you with your reps in government on Twitter. Last, click to connect to Twitter.

They are currently looking for investment from Angels investors, VCs or even Non-profit organization. I was asked if I could also get involved with the company. Let’s see.

Check it out and let us know what you think.

Filed under Gov 2.0, social media Tagged with awesome dc, congressman, DC, govluv, Open Forum Foundation, senator, twitter, washington, Wayne Burke

About Elias Shams
I have been a serial entrepreneur in telecom and social media space for past 12 years or so. I hold a M.S. degree in Telecommunication Engineering from the George Washington University and a B.S. degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Maryland. I’ve lived and worked in many countries and cities including London England, Tehran Iran, Bonn Germany, Paris France, Alicante Spain, Delhi India, and my favorite of all Washington, DC of great US of A. Two of the greatest Washington, DC based companies I worked for and very proud of are Yurie Systems which was sold to Lucent in 1998 for $1.23 B and telezoo.com that I founded in 1999. I am currently the founder and awesomizer @ awesomize.me

2 Responses to Introducing A More Effective Way To Bitch At Your Senator or Congressman – GovLuv

Wayne Moses Burke says:

December 14, 2009 at 8:04 am

Thanks for mentioning us, Elias. We’re still in a public beta with GovLuv, but are getting good response from people on the Hill and from citizens. I encourage anyone to let us know what they think and help us make this a useful tool for both ends of the conversation.

It also bears mentioning that we are non-profit, so we are not looking for investment per-say, but rather for funders.

Reply
- Elias Shams says:
  
  December 14, 2009 at 9:07 am
  
  Wayne, Thanks for correction. I separately received supporting DM from a few congressman on @AwesomeDC.
  
  Reply