Tweetminster, the UK politics tracker, gets a revamp and new features

Tweetminster, the UK politics tracker with a particular emphasis on Twitter, launches version 2.0 today.

The latest features – Channels, Lists, and support for Twitter’s recently announced @anywhere functionality – brings the service closer to its goal of making it “easier for people to follow and interact with UK politics”, says the startup.

Channels are described as “algorithmically curated pages that dynamically aggregate relevant content around topics”. Or put simply, it’s a UK politics news aggregator divided into categories: Economy, Europe & Foreign Affairs, Education, Environment, Society and Health.

The ‘Economy’ section, for example, makes for interesting and rather depressing reading with lots of news stories and blog posts on cuts, along with Conservative MP John Redwood’s opposition to a Capital Gains Tax increase, which will be of particular interest to TechCrunch Europe readers.

In addition to news items, Channels also feature a livestream of relevant tweets and “recommended Twitter users who post a lot about the Channel’s issue.” Overall, it’s a nice addition to Tweetminster.

Lists are what you’d expect them to be: various Twitter lists of MPs, something Tweetmister is calling ‘the Westminster Wire’ (a list of all political journalists, news sources and “influencers”), and MPs by political party.

Lastly is support for Twitter’s @anywhere functionality, which means that Twitter users can now find and follow MPs directly through Tweetminster (without leaving the site) as well as post tweets and @replies. Again, pretty useful stuff, making the experience that bit more interactive.