In the last 24 hours Barack Obama’s Twitter has been ousted from the number one spot. His 352,531 followers have been eclipsed by CNN’s breaking news feed @cnnbrk. The reason is quite simple, since winning the presidential election the feed has had just two updates, and neither were posted by the president himself.
During the election campaign many of Obama’s tweets were in the first person, possibly posted by him on the ubiquitous campaign Blackberry. It has presumably been decided that it is un-presidential to tweet.
What does this mean for the administration that pioneered engagement through social media as a key part of an election campaign? There is the new ObamaNews feed but it isn’t personal so it’s not really in keeping with the medium and it has just 24,000 followers at present, less than that of the average self respecting stand up comedian.
In four years Obama will have to go to the people again. Will it be credible if he starts to engage once more at the point that he is looking for the popular vote, or will he leave that to his opponent? (It may be too late for McCain but he has added 50,000 Twitter followers in the last week). This is a serious question; is engagement with the people something that is just to be done during elections or does the social web mean that politicians can and more importantly should engage directly with their electorate whilst they are in office. A tweet or two a week wouldn’t be too onerous even for the leader of the free world.
The inauguration of Barack Obabma is a historical defining moment for democracy. The anticipation of the inauguration was described as being like Christmas Eve and was celebrated in every way from commemorative crockery to the new Ben & Jerry’s ‘Yes Pecan’ ice cream flavour.
PR and the Social Web 