Independent and Tweetminster launch political 'wire' service

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The Independent has teamed up with Tweetminster to launch a new service promoting more open communication between voters, politicians and political journalists. Livewire will allow users to track updates to the microblogging service from UK MPs, parliamentary candidates in addition to political journalists, commentators and political news sources.

The service will also recommend new people to follow using the API from another service, Mr Tweet . It will act as a Twitter client, allowing users to tweet responses to wire updates from the site.

A search engine for browsing tweets by politician, party or source has also been created, as well as tools for analysing popular links and the context of political issues raised on the wire.

The wire is a natural development for Tweetminster, which was created in December 2008 as a way of tracking MPs and prospective candidates and helping them to better connect with the public via the service.

The move is the latest foray into Twitter by the Independent, which used Tweetminster to help conduct an interview with Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg last week . Speaking on Independent.co.uk , Jimmy Leach, editorial director at the title, said: "This is a great step forward in aggregating the latest whispers from the corridors of power and influence. Tweetminster has developed a fantastic system for eavesdropping on the great and the not-so-good and our users and fellow twitterers can now engage and involve themselves."