#Obama Adresses @thenation
July 6th, 2011This afternoon, President Obama participated in the first ever Twitter Town Hall in Washington, DC. The event lasted for a little over an hour, and allowed Twitter users to ask the President questions regarding the economy, jobs, veterans affairs, housing, and debt issues.
While anybody could jump in and ask the President anything they wanted in 140 characters or less, the questions were monitored by Twitter employees and filtered based on how popular the questions were among participants. For this event, popularity was determined using the old-fashioned Twitter method of “retweeting” (if you’re new to Twitter, think of it as the “Like” Button on Facebook). Although the questioners were largely pro-Obama in terms of content, there were some questions that made Mr. Obama step outside his usual comfort zone, including questions about privatizing the nation’s education system, as well as a request for the administration to step out of the housing market and let the free market determine housing prices. Mr. Obama commented on how housing prices will rise once the prices hit rock-bottom, but he didn’t going into as much detail regarding his housing policy as he did on other issues. There were posts as well from House Speaker John Boehner and noted journalist Nicholas Kristof, who hit Obama on his lack of job creation and his tax policies, but there were very few big name politicians and journalists that had their comments read.
You can catch a recap of the event on the White House’s Twitter page , which includes the questions as well as Mr. Obama’s answers adapted for Twitter. It also includes the first ever tweet sent by a sitting President of the United States!!!
