Legal Research

The First _____ President

By Omar Ha-Redeye

Well it seems as if Barack Obama might be the first black Twitter president of the United States. The Twitter blog indicates he will be the first to have an official account.

They also indicate an enormous spike in Twitter usage during the election.

Canadian politicians seem slightly ahead of the game in this respect, with our own Prime Minister having an account.  But his number of followers, around 2,000 at present, pales in comparison to that of Obama with over 120,000.

Sure, we can cite population differences between Canada and the U.S., or talk about the impact of American politics in the world versus Canada.

What makes this really interesting is that Barack Obama is the Twitter user that has the most followers, period, and by a healthy margin.   That’s more than Digg founder Kevin Rose, technology reporter Leo Leporte, or even CNN.

This has prompted some Twitter users to wonder whether he will also be the first president to send presidential announcements via email.  If any other politician were to try this it would quickly be resisted as spam or propaganda.  But Obama might just be able to get away with it, and if so, the nature of civic communications may be transformed forever.

Other American political offices and politicians can also be found on Twitter.

 Update

It seems hackers have caught on to this as well, with the Washington Post reporting that Obama e-mails are being used to carry Trojans.

Full post as published by Slaw.ca on November 07, 2008 (boomark / email).