the twitter president
Barack Obama is on Twitter. And flickr, LinkedIn (wonder if anyone I know knows him), BlackPlanet, and Asian Ave. And a whole lot of others.
Twitter and flickr, though, really struck me as to the level of saturation his campaign is reaping. If one only read the Obama blog and Obama twitters every day, they would have very little time to read anything else. I think using Twitter is smart, don't get me wrong, and they seem to be fairly good at it, judging by the posts - pretty vanilla, but what can you expect, really: "OMG, Michelle just got her friend to hook up with the pimply Secret Service guy, ROFL!"? It makes perfect sense that the guy leveraging gobs of internet savvy would use it, but it's also a dichotomy for the 'deeper conversation' candidate; the guy who finally urges us to look beyond the sound bites to a greater understanding of the issues is plastered across the ultimate sound bite machine.
Add to that my guess that it's not actually him even calling over his shoulder to a muscle-thumbed aide, 'hey, twitter this' and rolling off a quick 140 character missive to the masses, and you really have an odd phenomenon. The second- and third-person twitterings of the crisp and professional rhetoritician. Plus, he's following more people than are following him... ? Really? How voracious of a reader can one be to check up on theparty cow ("Hoping to get what I need. What I want seems to be out.") in the middle of a campaign? Is this any less contrived than a prime-time TV commercial?
Like I said, I don't fault the Obama camp for using Twitter, or any other tool to increase their exposure and strengthen ties to those who want to follow him. Quite the contrary. I think the potential of any 'web 2.0' tools to increase access, transparency, and communication once a President is in office is huge. It's just a little jarring, is all.
Twitter and flickr, though, really struck me as to the level of saturation his campaign is reaping. If one only read the Obama blog and Obama twitters every day, they would have very little time to read anything else. I think using Twitter is smart, don't get me wrong, and they seem to be fairly good at it, judging by the posts - pretty vanilla, but what can you expect, really: "OMG, Michelle just got her friend to hook up with the pimply Secret Service guy, ROFL!"? It makes perfect sense that the guy leveraging gobs of internet savvy would use it, but it's also a dichotomy for the 'deeper conversation' candidate; the guy who finally urges us to look beyond the sound bites to a greater understanding of the issues is plastered across the ultimate sound bite machine.
Add to that my guess that it's not actually him even calling over his shoulder to a muscle-thumbed aide, 'hey, twitter this' and rolling off a quick 140 character missive to the masses, and you really have an odd phenomenon. The second- and third-person twitterings of the crisp and professional rhetoritician. Plus, he's following more people than are following him... ? Really? How voracious of a reader can one be to check up on theparty cow ("Hoping to get what I need. What I want seems to be out.") in the middle of a campaign? Is this any less contrived than a prime-time TV commercial?
Like I said, I don't fault the Obama camp for using Twitter, or any other tool to increase their exposure and strengthen ties to those who want to follow him. Quite the contrary. I think the potential of any 'web 2.0' tools to increase access, transparency, and communication once a President is in office is huge. It's just a little jarring, is all.
posted by jim at 6/18/2008 07:51:00 AM
2 Comments:
I follow the Obama campaign on Twitter. It was kinda neat being at the rally on Monday and getting the Tweet that he was about to come out on stage about 30 seconds prior. Not really useful, but neat.
This is where Obama is going to leave McSame i the dust. he is actually using hte interwebs to his advantage. it may not be him, but by proxy, it is. Works for me!
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