This week, President Obama has been urging the American people to contact their representatives and senators in Washington on the debt deal. After his grass roots call to action Monday night, many House websites and servers crashed. Today, the president tapped into social media, telling Americans to tweet their reps.
Going one step further, his 2012 campaign staff followed up with a deluge of tweets from the @BarackObama account. They promised to post the handles of every single GOP lawmaker. State-by-state. Minute after minute.
A tiny sampling of today's tweets.
Not all lawmakers use Twitter and even if they do, sometime it's difficult to determine whether it's a legit account. Great idea in theory (less searching for us!) and helpful to some extent.
It's also kind of annoying. Hate to say it, but quit clogging my feed, man! We get the point — you're tech savvy.
A chunk of his 9.3+ million followers seem to agree. Mediaite reported that roughly 10,000 people unfollowed Obama in the past few hours alone.
The campaign is now swearing they're done and thanked tweeps for hanging in there through the flurry of tweets.
Give me your take in the comment section below, or tweet me at @digimuller.
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Didn't bother me. Turned off my phone and that was that.
I had Tweetdeck running while I was working this afternoon (it "chirps" when a new tweet comes in). I debated between temporarily unfollowing @BarackObama or just muting my speakers. I decided to ride it out and muted my speakers.
The idea was good. But I think if they would have taken the time to create a page where anyone could go -- input their zip code -- and email, phone, FB or tweet their representative would have been better. Then they could simply toss out a new (identical) tweet every x minutes instead of a constant stream of tweets.
The tweetstorm was unwelcome and pretty idiotic. All they had to do was point people to an online list. If this is the future of tweetdom in the White House then they are going to kill the idea very quickly. A large part of tech savvy is knowing when not to do something. They failed that test today. Disclosure: I am all about Obama support, so that's where I am coming from.
I thought it was a great idea, needed to know there's still some sane people out there.
Actually, glad for the reminder. My husband and I both promptly tweeted our idiotic congressmen.
Its was a great idea!
The Cons get steamed b/c they are the only ones allowed to "spam" people with porn or useless websites. This wasn't spam as it was a grassroots show of power.
The people who left were firebaggers or Teabags. Bye-bye.
It was a great show of power. Even TreasonSarah had to try to get attention by tweeting some dumbassed "l@@K at me" tweet.
Oh yea...don't have twitter on your phone and it won't be a problem.
Hopefully, his tweeters will re-follow.
Great idea. Everyone should RT theirs.
Fast-fading Sarah Palin (Rebecca Mansour) has twatted us to death. I still like the strategy, though.
Great idea, I would like to see more on Facebook. Some of these guys are Luddites but hopefully their staffs are not.
I loved it, it shows me that the President is right in step with everyday Americans. It showed the strength of People Power. Sometimes I think about the struggles that those before us went through to make this a better place. Compared to what they went through we've got it made in the shade. All we have to do is make our voices heard. Make a phone call, send a tweet, or email, stay informed, show up when it's time to vote. Like I said, we've got it made in the shade. Tweet on President O, Tweet On!
I think it was a brilliant play to not only wake up the preoccupied followers to President Obama's message to take action, but to the representatives that he easily provided to them. Its not in my comfort zone to tweet strangers, unless I have a supportive message. Obama's message, get out of the comfort zone and tell Republican legislatures to stop acting like children.