
Obama Admits That He’s Never Used Twitter, Thinks The Chinese Should Be Able To - vaksel
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/11/15/president-obama-twitter/
======
shib71
The self-importance of the IT industry astonishes me sometimes. Twitter is
awesome, but it's only a couple of years old, has just started taking it's
first baby steps into the public consciousness, and is built on minuscule
short-lived sound bites. How can anyone be seriously incredulous that a busy
man (like a presidential candidate) has not gotten around to using it?

~~~
silencio
It's one thing if Obama just didn't get around to using it - that I'm sure we
all can understand.

It's the idea that "he" was using Twitter, among other services (like an
iPhone app..), as a tool to promote his presidential campaign very heavily
towards certain demographics. Something that appealed to a lot of younger
voters who believed then that he seemed to be very in-touch with that group as
a result. Not to mention it wasn't the very idea of having a Twitter account
for Obama (or any other politician) that was interesting, but that it appeared
to be Obama himself writing the tweets, not someone else on his team.

~~~
neilc
I don't think it's any different than the Twitter accounts of countless other
politicians and public figures, many/most of which are actually ghost-written
(e.g. <http://twitter.com/SENJohnMcCain> , which uses the first person).

Anyone who thought that Obama was personally authoring his Twitter feed is a
little naive, IMHO.

~~~
silencio
It is naïve, but it wasn't an uncommon belief that Obama might have personally
authored at least a few of those tweets, and certainly nobody stopped anyone
from believing that. Not that I care either way at this point what he does or
has done with that Twitter account.

I know plenty of other politicians and public figures have ghostwritten
Twitter accounts. I was rather bummed to find out that the Mayor of LA had one
ghostwritten while his office initially acted like he was either writing them
himself or giving direct approval to tweets not written by him (and even a
little drama over that whole incident).

------
manish
I can understand that a president should make these types of publicity
gimmicks, but having some one else to update your twitter account which 2
million people believe yours is unfair. Why admit now, why not before?

------
jjs
140 characters go a lot farther in Hanzi.

~~~
tlrobinson
What's an estimate of the equivalent of 140 Hanzi characters in, say, English?

~~~
patio11
美利坚合众国（英文：USA
），简稱美國，旧称花旗國，是由50个州和一个聯邦地區组成的聯邦立宪制共和国。美国本土位於北美洲中部，东濒大西洋，西滨太平洋，北靠加拿大，南接墨西哥及墨西哥湾；首都华盛顿哥伦比亚特区与除夏威夷州和阿拉斯加州之外的48个州都位于美國本土。

This is half of the first paragraph of the simplified Chinese entry for the
United States in Wikipedia. I cheated a bit to bring it under length: the 英文
portion actually spelled out United States of America. It clocks in at about
138 characters.

A rough translation from someone who is not literate in Chinese just to show
you the information density:

\---

The United States of America (English: USA), referred to commonly as the
United States, formerly known as the United States [editor's note:
anachronistic Chinese 花旗國 rather than 美國], consist of 50 states and one
federal district, forming a constitutionally established federal republic. The
United States is located in the center of North America, bounded on the east
by the Atlantic Ocean and in the west by the Pacific Ocean, on the north by
Canada and the South by Mexico and the Gulf of Mexico. The capital is
Washington, DC. It is comprised of Hawaii, Alaska, and the 48 contiguous
states.

\---

[Edit: I was curious so I checked in Japanese, too, to substantiate my feeling
that it would be at the midpoint between Chinese and English. Yep.

アメリカ合衆国（アメリカがっしゅうこく、英：United States of
America）、通称アメリカまた合衆国（合州国）、米国（べいこく）は、北アメリカ大陸および北太平洋に位置する連邦共和国。
イギリスの北米植民地が1776年7月4日に独立を宣言して成立した国家である。

\---

The United States of America ( _insert pronunciation guide in Japanese here_ ,
English: United States of America), usually referred to as America, the United
States (the US), or _another way to say the US in Japanese_ is a federal
republic located on the North American continent and in the north Pacific
Ocean.

The United States of America was founded a nation when the North American
colonies declared their independence from England on July 4th, 1776.]

\---

And, for the comparison to English, here is what fits in a Tweet:

The United States of America (commonly referred to as the United States, the
U.S., the USA, or America) is a federal constitutional republic

There wasn't enough space for the period.

~~~
tr4nslator
Or for a more quantitative approach, with 1.7 Chinese characters per English
word[1] and an average English word length at 5.1 letters[2], then somewhere
around 420 characters.

(But of course, it really depends on the nature of the text.)

[1]
[http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/002379.h...](http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/002379.html)
[2] <http://blogamundo.net/lab/wordlengths/>

------
simanyay
This once again shows us that Obama has an insanely great public relations
team.

------
gojomo
I'm shocked -- shocked! -- that after the House health bill last week Obama
didn't type this tweet into his "✔ Verified Account" himself:

<http://twitter.com/BarackObama/status/5523912708>

