President Obama to host town hall meeting on Twitter

By Mike Dunn June 30, 2011

Twitter is about to get a lot more serious. On July 6, President Obama will use the same social media network we turn to for the ranting of friends and musings of Shaquille O’Neill to host a live town hall meeting, marking the first-ever Whitehouse town hall meeting to use Twitter. Specifically, the official site states that the President will answer questions about the economy and jobs, but we sure hope that he will be tackling more topics then just those two.

The White House hasn’t provided many details about how exactly the town hall will function, but we do know President Obama will respond live via webcast. The official page does not state how he will select questions to answer, or if viewers will be able to see the stream of questions that the President can select from during the event.

While this is the first Twitter town hall, this isn’t the first town hall President Obama has hosted through social media. On April 20, the President co-hosted a town hall meeting with Facebook. The President has also made clear that he values social media by meeting with the heads of several tech companies, and posting his own tweets and status updates. Hosting a town hall on Twitter will be a great way for him to not only show his continued dedication to social media, but add yet another way for him to reach out to the American people. Or at least the American people who have Twitter accounts, and can watch the event in the middle of the day during the work week. We’re still curious how in-depth of a question one can ask in 140 characters or less. Even more exciting would be if the President had to answer them in 140 characters.

To catch the first, but we’re assuming not the last, Twitter town hall, head to the official page on July 6 at 2 p.m. ET, or 11 a.m. PT. If you have a burning question for President Obama, you can tweet it by including the hash tag #AskObama, and cross your fingers that he will answer it when the meeting goes live. For updates and reminders about the event, you can follow @townhall.

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