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"First Question" with Gibbs Gets Place in White House Rotation

BY Nancy Scola | Friday, October 29 2010

Macon Phillips, the man in charge of the White House's new media operations, states on the White House blog that yesterday's "First Question" with Robert Gibbs, collected through Twitter, won't be some one-off experiment. And moreover, says Phillips, it isn't just about answering those one or two questions; it's about the White House using Twitter to take quick taking of the temperature of the public on a regular basis:

    1. In the morning, Robert will ask for that day's questions in a post to his @PressSec Twitter account.  Although this won't happen everyday, it will be pretty frequently so be sure to subscribe to his account and theWhiteHouse's main Twitter account (@WhiteHouse) to find out when it does.
    2. Once he's posted, anyone can fire away with questions using the hashtag #1q.
    3. Over the next hour or two we'll collect all of the questions, record his answers and post the video.

Even though every question can't get answered (looks like over 300 tweets with #1q were posted today) we'll try to choose questions from a broad variety of perspectives.  But even the questions we can't get to are tremendously valuable to understanding what's on people's minds.

"And if you have any ideas or feedback," about how to do this and other White House online engagements better, writes Phillips, "we'd love to hear it." He goes on to write, "in the spirit of this post, you can reach me at @macon44."

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