Barack Obama will hold a live ”Twitter town hall” session on Wednesday, responding to questions with the #AskObama tag.
The US president will, however, not type his economic policy in 140 characters or less, but will rather respond to questions via a live Web cast.
Twitter has developed a Web site specifically to host the town hall, and Twitter co-founder and executive chairman, Jack Dorsey, will moderate the event.
As of Thursday last week, the White House tweeted it was open to questions about jobs and the economy for the first town hall.
According to the official White House blog, last week also marked the launch of White House Tweetups, whereby followers of the @whitehouse handle could be selected to be part of the town hall's live audience.
“We look forward to hosting future Tweetups that will give @whitehouse followers the opportunity to attend events, engage with administration officials, and share their ideas with other @whitehouse followers,” said the blog post.
Tongue-in-cheek
The #AskObama feed is already full of questions for the president, with sarcasm and tongue-in-cheek humour drowning out the serious questions. Tweeted questions so far include: “Do you eat Hotpockets? #AskObama”
“Would you consider legalising marijuana to increase revenue and save tax dollars by freeing up crowded prisons, court rooms? #AskObama”
“#AskObama My first question is: Twitter? REALLY? You do realise this is the place where Justin Bieber trended for two years straight, right?”
While the event will be the first of its kind on Twitter, Obama participated in a town hall event on Facebook and YouTube in April. Questions were submitted via Facebook, and the social network's CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, read out the selected questions to Obama. The event was also screened via live Web cast.
Testing the water
Despite the fact that his presidential campaign drew heavily on social media to rally support, Obama is relatively new to Twitter.
His @BarackObama account has over nine million followers, but Obama only sent his first personal tweet in June, on Father's Day - marked with his initials, BO. He is yet to tweet again.
Last week, Pope Benedict XVI also entered the Twitterverse with his first tweet announcing the launch of the Vatican news and information portal. The Pope tweeted via Twitter for iPad.
Locally, president Jacob Zuma is warming up to his @SAPresident Twitter account, and has over 35 000 followers. Zuma, since joining the site, has also personally tweeted more often than his American counterpart.
Both the ANC and the DA ran live Q&A sessions in the run-up to the recent local government elections.
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