The social media election: a big day for Balls but a bigger week for Milibrand

“Ed Balls,” said Ed Balls, leering roguishly into the camera. Yes, this week marked the fourth anniversary of Ed Balls Day – when the shadow chancellor accidentally confused the “search” and “post” boxes on Twitter and tweeted simply, “Ed Balls”. Labour’s Big Beast has long since decided to play along with the joke – when you’re Ed Balls, you take what you can get – and Sky News turned the clip of him saying his name into a vine which has been looped more than 100,000 times.

Vines – six-second video clips – have flourished during the election campaign. They are less hassle to make than a YouTube video, and there’s no waiting through boring adverts before you’re allowed to watch them. They are the perfect way to capture, say, a young man’s trousers falling down as he asks for a selfie with Nick Clegg, or the moment Ed Miliband nearly plunges to his doom while stepping off Question Time’s strange little Q-shaped podium.

Neither of these moments, however, was the big video event of the week. That honour surely belongs to Labour’s party political broadcast, Ed Miliband: A Portrait, produced by Bourne Ultimatum director Paul Greengrass. With its stirring shots of the Labour leader walking through corridors and gesticulating on a bench, it sparked wildly polarised front pages and bucketloads of op-eds. Joke! Of course it didn’t. Just 32,500 people have watched it on YouTube since 28 April.

No, the video everyone felt obliged to talk about was Miliband’s interview with Russell Brand, although “interview” is perhaps the wrong word for an eight-minute clip that was 80% a diatribe about neoliberal paradigms, 10% Miliband glottal-stopping the word “gotta” like late 90s Tony Blair, and 10% Russell Brand drinking from a really big bottle of water. Still, it’s had nearly one million views, and another instalment is threatened on Monday.

We’re nearly at the finish line, so there’s just time to check back in on a few old favourites from earlier in the campaign. The Sky politics team is still trying to Make Periscope Happen, although Kay Burley appeared to give up on Friday and just live-streamed a lovely afternoon tea she had near the Lindo wing instead. On Instagram, Justine Miliband and Nick Clegg are still posing with food – very much in tune with the social network’s overall vibe – while Miliband is using photos of himself as a cover to talk about Labour’s pledges. A riskier strategy.

And, finally, Scottish politicians continue to be the best value on Twitter, whether it’s Labour’s Kezia Dugdale getting heckled by her SNP-supporting dad, Nicola Sturgeon teasing journalists about their loo habits, or the Tories’ Ruth Davidson posing on a tank. Come on, a Daily Mail journalist asked Davidson last week. Isn’t Twitter just a bubble? “Yeah,” came the reply, “but the in jokes and snarking are magnificent.” She’s not wrong.