No matter which side of the great American political divide you fall on, there is one statement we can all agree with. “Barack Obama is our first social media president.” That’s “social media”, not “socialist”, folks. How so?
- At an event with comedian Aziz Ansari back in March, Obama openly boasted that he had more Twitter followers – 12.8 million and counting.
- An Instagram photo of Obama goes viral and spawns a new Internet star (for a day) – Dive Bar Girl.
- Meanwhile, a Republican group releases a YouTube video entitled Is Obama too cool to be President? They should have consulted the Democrats; this video went nowhere on the viral video scale.
- Obama’s support for same-sex marriage back in May broke current retweeting records for “most retweeted tweet” of all time.
- Some supporters mourn the Obama hope and change energy from 2008 with a 2012 parody of the Goyte hit, “Obama that I used to know.” But guess what? The jaded will most likely still cast their vote for The Big O.
- The Obama campaign becomes the first presidential campaign to accept donations via text.
- Last week, he took to Reddit and its AMA (Ask Me Anything) chat forum.
- As of this Monday, on the eve of the Democratic National Convention, the Republican National Convention was the most tweeted about national convention to date – the number one retweet? @BarakObama’s respond to Clint Eastwood’s empty chair routine.
Kathy Drasky regularly writes about online culture. Her marketing and communications work with the ANZA Technology Network, Advance Global Australians and with various Australians and Australian enterprises has led to at least a dozen trips Down Under.
An accomplished digital photographer, her photos have appeared in 7×7 Magazine, the San Francisco Chronicle and Google Schmap.
