The social network election?

BBC Interactivity Assistant Editor Matthew Eltringham will be watching social networking in the general election campaign. This is the first of his regular blogs for Discussion on CoJo. 

Was first-time voter Ellie Gellard's appearance as the warm-up act for Labour's manifesto launch the moment the election campaign went 'social'?

Better known on Twitter as BevaniteEllie to 3,000-plus followers, her introduction was clearly meant to signal Labour's familiarity with social media and commitment to a digital election.

But even as the self-styled Stiletto Socialist was describing the 2010 campaign as "a word of mouth election", Tory blogger Guido Fawkes was posting a short but telling biography of her.

Rapid rebuttal was in full flow - Alastair Campbell was selling the Tory manifesto on eBay and the Conservative Head of Press, Henry Macrory, was pointing out the "spooky similarities" between the cover of the Labour manifesto and the front cover of George Orwell's Animal Farm.

So far, so familiar. The parties hammer away at each other on their platforms of choice - TV, radio, or blogs. Google search and now social networks have been added to their armouries.

The parties have rapidly mastered the art of retaliation at the touch of a button and been quick to see the potential of sharing their key messages with as wide a networked audience as possible.

Certainly, largely thanks to social media, the speed of the 2010 electoral news cycle is considerably faster than previous ones. David Cameron's omission of the planned 'gay or straight' line from his speech about the great ignored was tweeted almost before he sat down.

And the Tories raised immediate questions about just how spontaneous was Gordon Brown's send-off from St Pancras Station.

The Lib Dems are plugging away with Twitter, YouTube and Facebook.

But isn't social networking supposed to be more that just a megaphone and be more about conversation and dialogue? There's plenty of broadcasting going on but just how much engagement is there, beyond the politically obsessed, with real people?

Before the election campaign, the Tories crowdsourced a response to the Budget and claimed more than 1,000 replies, which they say helped shape their response and gave them a new line of attack.

They're also now crowdsourcing the Labour manifesto.

On day two of the campaign, Labour hosted a 'People's PMQs'. Chaired by the former Labour MP Oona King, with the Prime Minister answering questions submitted through social networks, it had fewer than 300 viewers at any one time.

The Lib Dems meanwhile are trying a Rage Against the Machine-style campaign to get the party into office.

Beyond the activities of the major parties, there's a mixed picture of just how much people are themselves engaging with the online election.

Democracy UK, Facebook's portal pulling together a range of civic engagement initiatives, has around 35,000 fans. That is compared to the 56,000 members of the Leave Our Cider Alone group that campaigned against the Budget cider tax.

Of course numbers aren't everything - Facebook and YouTube are also collaborating on a Digital Debate between the three party leaders.

But Tweetminster reported on Monday that #ukelection was top-trending in the UK for only the first time since the day the election was called. The only other hashtag that has trended noticeably was #electionpop - with Tweeters suggesting song titles for the campaign.

And there are some interesting grassroots initiatives such as The Straight Choice, a crowdsourced project investigating party leaflets, or Your Next MP, which aims to pull together detailed information about candidates standing in each constituency.

Politicians don't always make it easy for themselves - building a successful online relationship takes time and effort. An election campaign is clearly the time when the parties want and need to engage with the electorate and the potential that social media offers them is huge. But social networks are only the means to allow that engagement; it's how the parties and the politicians use them that is the key.