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Got questions for Obama? Tweet 'em now
Starting at 2 p.m. ET on Wednesday, President Obama will hold the first ever "Twitter Town Hall," to discuss jobs and the economy. The president will be speaking, not tweeting, but his questions will come from Twitter.
Thousands of Tweets are already populating the #AskObama hashtag created for the event. But the White House says Obama will also answer questions that are asked on Twitter while the event is going on.
Twitter will monitor hot tweets — those that have the most Retweets, Favorites, and Replies. Also, with help from visualization company Mass Relevance, Twitter will be mapping the big themes and locations that are "driving" the conversation.
To help curate the event, Twitter has picked a "team of seasoned tweeters" to moderate the discussion, and flag questions for the president, Twitter says on its blog.
To watch the Town Hall, you can follow tweets from @townhall, or watch the event live on its website.
Why pick Twitter? "If you're going to communicate with the broad public, it's no longer sufficient to do it through the mainstream media," Dan Pfeiffer, White House Communications Director, said on a conference call today.
Surprisingly, the people who interact most with the White House on social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter are older than you might expect, Macon Phillips, the White House Director of Digital Strategy, said.
Earlier this year, the White House invited its Twitter followers to attend the event in person. The first 30 followers who signed up will be present in the audience at the event tomorrow. Word is, they'll be tweeting live, too.
More about Twitter and the White House on msnbc.com:
- Tweets from the veep: Biden now on Twitter
- Obama to personally tweet from Twitter account
- Hacked Fox Twitter feed reports Obama's death
Nidhi Subbaraman writes about technology and science at msnbc.com. Find Nidhi on Twitter, and join our conversation on Facebook.
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