Remember when Twitter was the target of jokes? Nobody laughs already

I remember how a few years ago everyone was laughing at Twitter. It was the blogosphere punching bag. It was a stupid little service that no one in their right mind used. It was for people who wanted to share parts of their lives - which no one but themselves wanted to read. He was for egomaniacs. Or losers. He was not destined to become fashionable.

And then he became.
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I thought about it today when I stood in the Eastern Room of the White House (#humblebrag). Why was I there? To see Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey asking questions to President Obama. Yes, the president of the United States answered questions that were sent exclusively from Twitter - a stupid service, which everyone was laughing at, remember?

The most exciting thing about today's event is how well it was organized. A week ago, the White House sent out a press release in which it reported on the event and asked to send questions via Twitter with the hashtag "#askobama". Twitter then teamed up with Mass Relevance , which used its own algorithms, and also appointed curators with political experience to select the questions to be asked.

In total, as we were told, there were 169,395 tweets with #askobama hashtag.

Almost as during the debates that we see during election cycles, neither Dorsey nor the president knew in advance what questions were selected. What followed was a deep and rather frank conversation about the range of topics that people really care about. According to Mass Relevance, 26% of tweets were about jobs, 19% were about the budget, 16% were about taxes, 10% were about education, and 6% were about housing. All questions were serious in nature.

And questions also came in during the event. Several times Dorsey had to choose a tweet with a question written no later than 10 minutes ago to ask the president. Often the question turned out to be about the answer that the president gave earlier during the event. The President then explained his position in more detail. In real time.

And several tweets with questions were selected from prominent political figures, for example, Speaker John Beyner (Republican) and columnist from the New York Times Nick Christophe. Some may not like it, because these people can ask the president questions at almost any time - but the transparency of what is happening on Twitter has been refreshing.

When the president answered Beiner's question about debts and the growth in the number of jobs, he noted that his rival’s position was, in his opinion, “slightly distorted,” but he nevertheless answered - and then joked about Beer’s poor recruitment skills (which apparently it was not his fault ).



Of course, press conferences are as old as modern politics itself. And technology intervening in politics is also not new. For example, many are still convinced that Kennedy won the 1960 election simply because he looked better on television than Nixon. But for some reason, Twitter and political discourse just feel good together.

I remember this conversation during the political primaries of 2008. Again, people were then largely divided on this issue - how many of them were still divided because of Twitter, which was not helped even by many stability problems that year. But with the expansion of scale, these problems were far behind, and events such as today are likely to make Twitter’s symbiotic relationship and politics clearer than ever. I suspect that during the 2012 election cycle they will become really insane (in a good way, I hope).

If we compare today's event with a similar press conference that Facebook organized with the president (at Facebook headquarters) at the beginning of this year, I don’t think that anyone doubts that this time it was better. In my opinion, the Facebook event was more like an old school conference on MTV or even the Rock the Vote event. Facebook is today's equivalent of MTV. This is the place where politicians go to create a “image” with a mass audience. But in the events themselves there is often nothing in essence.

Twitter is still a bit of a Facebook background. The president does not need to use such an event to seriously address voters (although there is something in it and this, of course), he can simply take and answer serious questions seriously. If you said four years ago that the Twitter event with the president would be greeted as worthy, everyone would have laughed. Hell, just using the words “Twitter” and “President” in one sentence, you would have led to an explosion of uncontrollable laughter. But today it went without problems.

Although some of today's event seemed to be a “ meaningless marketing gimmick ” (however, the author of this statement is Umar Hack - the same guy who held one of the worst press conferences at SXSW two years ago with - think about - then Twitter CEO Evan Williams). For me, today's event seemed a logical development of the format of press conferences. Forget about questions from the audience, which often range from mediocre to pitiful and make politicians uselessly indulge the crowd - “Thank you so much for your question, and I also grew up on the farm.” Get the question - the best from anywhere in the world - answer it, go to the next one.

When I read a few weeks ago that the president would finally send his tweets from his account, I also reacted to this a bit suspiciously. Why now? Well, of course, because the election campaign begins. But, to be honest, I was more concerned that a president who is too accessible through a service like Twitter may somewhat belittle his status - it’s not very popular to say, maybe, but I suspect that many people think something like that. I would not want a president tweet all day.

And so I think that today's event was the perfect compromise. The president will tweet from time to time (undoubtedly, often to help his campaign), but he must hold back most of the answers until he can voice them in a more decent setting - for example, in the White House during a press conference. Yes, even this was technically “tweeting” (oh my God, this word still sounds so foolish). And while questions may be brief, answers to important topics often require much more than 140 characters. This format works.

Twitter is a channel through which everyone can be heard. Yes, you have to register, but it's free - the barrier to participating in these press conferences has never been so low. This is a great thing. This is a really powerful tool. And the White House is right respecting him.

After today's event, I looked through some of my old articles about Twitter, trying to remember how little service aroused a few years ago. Here is one good example : someone predicted the failure of Twitter, because at the random wedding no one knew about it. (And a bonus to me for this part at the end, where I’m wondering what would happen if the iPhone had a built-in Twitter button ...)

Today I stood in the Eastern Room of the White House with the President. To his left hung a portrait of George Washington - the old property of the White House - written in 1797 (and saved from a fire in 1814). To his right hung a portrait of Martha Washington, painted in 1878. And in the center in front of him was a large television screen showing tweets addressed to the president.

Times change.

Twitter - a small service without a future - now affects the president.