Plan to make Ireland trend on Twitter during Obama visit

29 Apr 2011

Prominent tourism groups Tourism Ireland, Failte Ireland, Bord Bia, Good Food Ireland and others have joined in an initiative called #IRLday to create enough positive tweets about Ireland to top Twitter’s trending topic list of the most popular and active topics worldwide.

The initiative is the brainchild of tourism app firm PocketNative. Groups that have joined the initiative so far include Tourism Ireland, Failte Ireland, Bord Bia, Good Food Ireland, The Restaurant Association of Ireland, Enterprise Ireland, Irish Foodies and Paddy Power.

“This idea revolves around the visit of US President Barrack Obama in late May,” explained PocketNative’s John Twohig.

“Let’s get Ireland trending – this has grown over the last 10 days and now has the support of the wider tourism industry in Ireland, the idea being that we tweet about Ireland in a positive light on the day,” Twohig added.

The plan to get Ireland trending

At 2pm Irish time on the date of Obama’s visit at the end of May (9am New York time), the aim is to get people tweeting with the #IRLday hashtag and users are encouraged to tweet about anything of interest, including photographs of Irish scenery.

Obama is rumoured to be visiting Ireland 22-23 May, where he will check out his Irish roots at Moneygall in Offaly, where Obama’s second great-grandfather Falmouth Kearney was from.

John Kennedy is a journalist who served as editor of Silicon Republic for 17 years

editorial@siliconrepublic.com