Obama Is Hiring a Twitterer

http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2010/02/12/obama-is-hiring-a-twitterer/

by raju • 16 years ago

14 8 16 years ago

blogs.wsj.com

mscantland2• 16 years ago

Your tax dollars at work.

I would be for this expenditure if it were likely to involve real communication. Instead, your money will be spent to pander to the proletariat and to oversimplify issues that align with Obama getting re-elected.

spamizbad• 16 years ago

> Your tax dollars at work.

From the article: 'The Democratic National Committee’s “social networks manager” job description says the position entails maintaining the President’s accounts on Facebook, Twitter and MySpace.'

It's a position paid for by the DNC, not the US Government.

pavs• 16 years ago

You and your facts have no place here. hush!

mscantland2• 16 years ago

Yes, I read the article too. The cost of the twitterer's salary is just a minor part of this maneuver. It is unavoidable that this person will be supported by public resources, just as public resources are used for anything else which involves the president.

His vacation to Hawaii, for example was estimated to cost $100MM source: http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/philg/2009/12/21/the-cost-of-ob...

joe_the_user• 16 years ago

Sadly, I don't think it will help.

Obama came into office with promise that he was going to change how things operated, not put simply forward the same old programs (of whatever political stripe). I think that promise is deader than any other. Washington itself could easily be to blame but I think it's clear that government at the speed and transparency of twitter is not going to show up very soon. Predictable - perhaps. Sad - certainly.

anamax• 16 years ago

> Sadly, I don't think it will help.

What could it help?

Twitter is a communications medium. Which of Obama's problems are due to communications?

dzlobin• 16 years ago

None, which leads me to say what the hell is the point?

JCThoughtscream• 16 years ago

While arguments can be made that Twitter, Facebook et al encourages only superficial coverage of weighty governmental concerns... hey, at least it acts like a gateway.

Seriously - what do you notice first? A line on your facebook feed, an alert from your Tweetdeck account, or a thousand-word column on the NYT or White House blogpost exhaustively covering every detail? I would hesitate to say this is in absolutes, but I do feel that the two former two forms of media are /more/ likely to drag an audience to the latter two - it'd exist outside of their range of concerns otherwise.

Obama Is Hiring a Twitterer

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