{"id":394,"date":"2009-03-16T21:57:36","date_gmt":"2009-03-17T04:57:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.talesfromthe.net\/jon\/?p=394"},"modified":"2009-03-16T21:57:36","modified_gmt":"2009-03-17T04:57:36","slug":"launching-ask-the-president-on-twitter-draft","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/2024.thenexus.today\/index.php\/2009\/03\/16\/launching-ask-the-president-on-twitter-draft\/","title":{"rendered":"Launching “Ask The President” on Twitter"},"content":{"rendered":"

Original draft March 16.\u00c2\u00a0 Revised March 19.
\n<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

\"The<\/a><\/p>\n

“Net movement” journalist\/activist Ari Melber’s latest brainstorm, Ask the President<\/strong>, is launching on March 19 at http:\/\/www.communitycounts.com\/Obama<\/a>. \u00c2\u00a0 The basic idea is to provide a followon to Change.gov’s short-lived Open for Questions<\/strong> series [1<\/a>, 2<\/a>]: a way for people to submit potential questions and vote on what they think the best ones are.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s an intriguing idea, with the possibility of providing a path around the media gatekeepers who have historically controlled access.<\/p>\n

Here are some thoughts about how Tweeple (people on Twitter) who support the idea can help with Ask the President<\/strong>‘s launch.<\/p>\n

If you’re new to Twitter — or skeptical about it — Deanna Zandt’s two-part series “Why Twitter, anyways?<\/a>“\u00c2\u00a0 and “A non-fanatical beginner’s guide to Twitter<\/a>” is a great introduction.\u00c2\u00a0 Rebecca Leaman’s Introduction to Hashtags<\/a> on Wild Apricot <\/em>is also useful background on how\u00c2\u00a0 words or abbreviations preceded by # are for organizing information … <\/em>you’ll be seeing a lot of them in this post.<\/p>\n

Strategy<\/h2>\n

There are at least three ways to create buzz on Twitter<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. political hashtags like #gov20 (“Government 2.0”), #tcot (“top conservatives on Twitter”), #rebelleft, and #bipart (“bipartisan discussions”) reach people likely to be interested in getting involved and finding out more<\/li>\n
  2. whenever somebody tweets*, anybody who’s following them sees it.\u00c2\u00a0 So getting the “twiterati”, folks who have lots of or influential followers, to tweet about Ask the President<\/strong> on Thursday can be very helpful.<\/li>\n
  3. Twitter’s search page has a list of the top 10 “trending topics”, the words or phrases that are being used most often in the Twitterverse.\u00c2\u00a0 Once something gets on this list, a lot of people start to notice it and discuss it, which in turn lets their followers know what’s happening.\u00c2\u00a0 “Why is everybody talking about Skittles?”\u00c2\u00a0 “Because Skittles’ changed their web site check out http:\/\/skittles.com”.\u00c2\u00a0 Can AskThePresident crack the top 10?<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    These aren’t either-or options, of course.\u00c2\u00a0 Getting somebody with a lot of followers to tweet about AskThePresident and include the right hashtags helps with #1 and #2.\u00c2\u00a0 When their followers retweet**, it starts to help with #3 as well.<\/p>\n

    Hashtags<\/h2>\n

    Ask the President’s hashtag is #askpres<\/strong>.\u00c2\u00a0 So you can use Twitter search or a Twitter client to see all the tweets about Ask the President<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n

    There are a lot of existing Twitter hashtags whose readers are likely to be interested in Ask The President<\/strong>.\u00c2\u00a0 As well as political ones from all sides of the aisle, there are also communities whose concerns typically don’t get covered in White House press conferences.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 Feminists, women of color, lesbians, gays, bisexuals, transgendered, and others who are marginalized potentially have a huge amount to gain from this if they’re able to organize and participate effectively.\u00c2\u00a0 So hashtags like #fem2, #woc, #lgbtq are likely to be very effective channels.<\/p>\n

    Especially as things are getting off the ground, it’ll add a lot more credibility if somebody already well-known to the readers of a specific hashtag tweets about Ask the President<\/strong>.\u00c2\u00a0 Here’s a situation where retweeting helps.\u00c2\u00a0 A possible sequence, once the site goes live on Thursday:<\/p>\n