Gordon Brown may come across as a bit of a dour, stern and boring man but his backstage staff certainly know a thing or two about creating engaging web content. Having run a successful Twitter feed about the Prime Minister for several months, they’ve now gone one step further and relaunched Number10.gov.uk as an all-singing, all-dancing web2.0 operation.

It features everything a 2008 homepage should have - Flickr, Youtube and Twitter feeds down the side, all the latest Prime Minister-related news in the main column and even a video message from the man himself. Another section, Number 10 TV, gives users a selection of videos of Prime Ministerial action: visting young offenders, rescuing kestrels - it’s all in a day’s work for Gordon! At the top of the screen there’s even a label saying ‘Beta’ to show they really are in there with the Web 2.0 cliches (they stop short of calling the site ‘Nmbr10′ though).

Where it gets really interesting, though, is the ‘Communicate’ section. Here, users are invited to submit video-based questions in order to receive replies via video from Gordon Brown. Something tells me he won’t be replying to every single message. If Brown starts turning up late for important Commons debates with the excuse “Sorry, I was talking to people on my webcam” I can’t see him staying in the job long. Actually, I can’t see him staying in the job long anyway, but that’s another story.

Selective replies aside, is this E-Democracy in action? Is this a way for the electorate to directly engage with the most powerful man in the country? I honestly worry that this is a gimmick, put together to show off the government’s web credentials and that it’ll be wound down quietly in a few months time.

It’d be a shame for that to happen, but it certainly hasn’t started off well. Visiting ‘Ask the PM’ we are told that answers will be given in September. Politics is an ever-changing beast. If I ask a question now, how relevant will it be by the time an answer rolls around? Fair enough, you might expect delays after a while, when time gets tight in a crisis, maybe, but on launch day why isn’t the prime minister standing by to answer questions today? He could at least be answering weekly. If a week is a long time in politics, a month is an eternity.

So, trendy web feeds aside, Number 10’s new website has failed already in my eyes. Their big ‘Ask the PM’ feature should be a hit but it hasn’t grasped the immediacy of the web. No-one expects the Prime Minister to answer questions every day, but to wait a month? That’s far too long. If the press were demanding answers from the PM on an important topic he’d be expected to make a statement quickly. By not treating the public the same way it shows that this is an opportunity (and the point) missed.