Obama never on Twitter
By Techgirl

By now it is history that Sentator Obama made masterly use of Web 2 platforms like Facebook and Twitter to raise tens of millions of dollars and reach out to the voters while campaigning to be President.

But there were many Americans who actually believed that President Obama personally Twittered while campaigning. Or at least twittered once. 

After becoming President in Jan, 2009 the Twitter updates stopped.  One of America’s top 3 newspapers New York Times asked in Feb 25, 2009: “So what happened? President Obama hasn’t tweeted once since being sworn into office. He posts weekly five-minute videos at whitehouse.gov. Can’t the guy type a one-line update? Some think Obama supporters have been “pumped and dumped” now that the election is over. Others believe that as president, Mr. Obama has been restricted from thumb-typing tweets on his BlackBerry because of federal restrictions on presidential communications. But that shouldn’t stop an eager intern from taking over.”

Even the New York Times was under the impression that President Obama did some of his Tweets on Twitter.

On Nov 16, 2009 while on a visit to China, a local student asked Obama about Twitter clearly under the impression that the first black President actually had used Twitter. President Obama broke many Twitter hearts by saying: “Well, first of all, let me say that I have never used Twitter. My thumbs are too clumsy to type in things on the phone.”

Many Twitter users today are expressing surprise and even shock that Obama never every personally used Twitter. Why did so many people actually believe that Senator and later President Obama actually Twittered?  The Obama team encouraged this view to reach out to the young Americans.

Perhaps what should have been a give away is that while President Obama has 2.6 million followers on Twitter, he was following 750 thousand people on the same account.  It is hard enough to follow 100 people, how can anyone have followed so many?

Not surprisingly the Chinese Government ensured that Obama’s local interaction and Q&A sessions were heavily censored on the local internet.

Techgoss note:  Techgirl is a senior Tech journalist who reports on the IT, KPO and KPO Sectors for a leading media house.  In her spare time, she dabbles in satire in her blog
http://techgirltalk.blogspot.com