Monday, July 27, 2009

White House bans Twitter


President Obama is the most tech savvy President to occupy the White House. He can't live without his Blackberry. A super secure version was customized so he could keep using one. Obama also made very effective use of the internet to attract young voters during the 2008 campaign. This makes it very odd he would ban Twitter. Twitter is the fastest growing online social media. Perhaps he is afraid staffers will tweet information he wants to keep from the public. President Obama is is failing on his promise of openness and transparency.

From UPI:
WASHINGTON, July 26 (UPI) -- White House staffers have been blocked from using Twitter at work, press secretary Robert Gibbs said.

Gibbs disclosed the block Friday, saying he doesn't use the popular social networking site himself because the world already knows enough about what he is doing, Tribune Newspapers reported Sunday.

Gibbs said he really doesn't know why the chief executive's offices
blocked access to the site. Maybe to avoid taxpayer-funded tweets, Tribune Newspapers said.

4 comments:

Ericatwitts said...

He more or less most likely banned it due to his declining poll numbers and has seen what kind of impact that Twitter is having!!!

barbsnowxxvix said...

I think they have more than enough to do cleaning up the mess they inherited than to respond to every tweet that a nut case sends them

MamaNolte said...

O can tweet it out, but he can't listen to the tweets. He doesn't trust his people because they know the spin drill.

Villiage Idiot said...

It's pretty easy to envision dangerous scenarios:

whitehousestaffer: @newfriendwithcuriousaccent Hey, you asked to know when Gates was in the O with O. He's there...

Or -

@gossipcolumnist Yea, O is definitely not enjoying the Russian ambassador. The man drinks like a fish.

And so on. I'm actually shocked they waited this long to impose a ban.