Obama on Twitter

Barack Obama did a first ever Presidential Twitter party this week (Twitter Town Hall as he called it).  Of course it was the first ever, we never had social media like this before when a President was trying to communicate with the public.

#AskObama


Everyone is making a huge deal of it, and rightly so.  Using Twitter shows the world that our President is with it, in touch with the people, and using every means possible to communicate his vision and plans.

It's not that different, really though, from the old fireside chat and the very standard press conference.  He's using influential people with vast networks of followers to "broadcast" his message.  Sure, it's more spontaneous and we all seemingly get a chance to lob in a question and get an instant, heartfelt response, but it's still the same concept in many ways.

He even did a simultaneous TweetUp where he had folks sitting in the same room with him tweeting at the same time (sounds like a press conference to me).

Like any other kind of medium, the President was using gatekeepers and "curators" to control the flow and spread the messages -- and he certainly had most of them pre-written I am sure.  The Twitter party is a modern day press conference where the President was simply disseminating his message and answering questions from connected people.  A little quicker and in a lot fewer words, but that's just how we communicate "now a days."

But that's ok, he is on Twitter, and many of us are on there too - getting our news, getting connected, and getting our own messages out there.  As individuals, as brands, as business owners, and yes even as politicians.

I give him a lot of credit for doing it - it's a smart way to also get the younger folks more involved.  He's using technology to spread his "brand", just like many of us are trying to do with our own.

What's your experience?  Jim.

Jim Joseph
President of Lippe Taylor
Author of "The Experience Effect"