Daily Digest: @obamacouldlearnsomething from @thetwitteringdiplomat
BY Nancy Scola | Wednesday, December 24 2008
The Daily Digest will be taking a break tomorrow and Friday for the Christmas holiday, and will return on Monday. We at PdF and techPresident wish you a happy and healthy holiday season.
-
@bama, Take Two: Barack Obama has been breaking a lot of hearts, 140 missing characters at a time. The official @BarackObama Twitter account has gone entirely dark in recent weeks, with nary a tweet since about 18 hours after the election was called in his favor. That's 49 utterly tweetless days and nights if you're counting along at home. When it comes to social media, the casual and somewhat intimate Twitter form wasn't one of the Obama campaign's strongest suits. But, here's a chance at improvement. Team Obama has just begun tweeting the Inauguration at @obamainaugural. With the somewhat astounding public interest in what will take place January 20th, Twitter is a strong way to dribble out the countless details and tips that will help engage the American people in the event -- and make the day go more smoothly. Alas, there have only been a handful of tweets so far, two of which consisted of a simple countdown -- "28 days to go." (What, that doesn't even warrant an exclamation point? Give us something...)
-
In Defense of Personal Public Diplomacy: In other Twitter news, State Department diplomat Colleen Graffy has been in our sights for tweeting everything from her travels to Armenia to her tips on when Bad, Bath, and Beyond coupons expire. (They don't!) Her style of tweeting hs earned her the derision of the Washington Post's Al Kamen and critiques by others in the diplomatic sphere. But Graffy seems to have a knack for understanding the central role that honest-to-goodness conversations play in this brave new world. She's answered her critics in Kamen's own stomping ground, with a WaPo op-ed defending her brand of public diplomacy that blurs the line between personal and professional. Graffy tells of a recent trip to Bucharest: "One young Romanian student said: 'We feel like we already know you -- you are not some intimidating government official. We feel comfortable talking with you.' Isn't that what effective public diplomacy is about?"
-
From Obama for America to Americans for...What, Again?: "In the campaign we were organizing people," explains transition team Internet director Macon Phillips on the challenges of wiring the next steps of Obama's road to the White House. "Now it's more conversational, trying to listen and engage people that weren't engaged in the campaign." In "Obama for America 2.0?," the Nation's Ari Melber has a rundown of the (sometimes competing) visions of what's next for the energy and networked infrastructure the campaign gave rise to from everyone from organizing thinker Marshall Ganz to campaign blogger Sam Graham-Felsen to our own Micah Sifry. It's somewhat useful to try to tease apart when we're talking about official White House online engagement like we've seen with Change.gov and capitalizing on the campaign's momentum from outside 1600 Pennsylvania -- a distinction that's important if only because, it seems, either could be hugely successful at the very same time the other peters out.
In Case You Missed It...
We've got the latest from the Federal Web Managers Council's on "Social Media and the Federal Government: Perceived and Real Barriers and Potential Solutions."