It’s Saturday! Time for Another Message from “Our” President-Elect

It’s only the 2nd week – but others have faltered in their Social Media attempt sooner than the USA’s (and all our heart’s) President-Elect Barack Obama. His team has just posted the next weekly message on YouTube. I’d like to note two things here:

• The background differs from the background of last week’s speech. That makes it easier to distinguish the two at one glance.
• The headline – “Your Weekly Address from the President-elect” – does not differ. That makes it more difficult to distinguish the one speech from the other.

On the side: I checked the Changedotgov YouTube Channel again today because I had seen Obama’s speech on CNN – and the quality of the image was so fuzzy that I thought “Did they fetch this from YouTube?” They did. Changedotgov should think about offering an HQ download link. (The teleprompter use is very apparent this time, don’t you think?)

Your Weekly Address from the President-Elect – Barack Obama’s social media identities

Before talking about Your Weekly Address from the President-Elect, just a brief note regarding language: I deliberately started blogging in German at the beginning of this year, and at the same time also deliberately stopped blogging anonymously. While I don’t miss the anonymity at all (or rather: find nonymity to be very rewarding, even if it comes with a bit of self-censorship; but keeping some thoughts to yourself is not a bad idea, after all), I ever more often feel like I’d rather go back to blogging in English. In particular when blogging about things that come to me in an anglosaxon, anglophone context, for instance: the US-elections and the President-Elect Barack Obama. I think I am now going to go for a mix of both languages – English is going to become all the more important as the language of global social media anyway, giving you more options to connect with others and across more contexts

Going back to the topic – the YouTube video Your Weekly Address from the President-Elect – today is the 16th of November, the video below was posted yesterday and is currently at the top of the viral video chart with more than half a million views so far:

It was posted by YouTube Account ChangeDotGov; making the promise to deliver a new speech every week is pretty bold. They better live up to it! Regarding the name of the account, it is associated with the URL change.gov – The Obama-Biden Transition Team, and my guess is that both the URL and the YouTube-Account will fall idle after Jan 20, 2009, when Obama is going to be inaugurated as the 44th president of the US.

A release by the Associated Press posted three days ago discussed Obama’s social media strategy and already hinted at the possibility of a Youtube speech to go live every Saturday – and how this turns around the hierachies of the traditional news ecology:

Such direct online contact with voters could also present a challenge for reporters covering Obama, since the new president will in many ways be able to bypass traditional media while also taking advantage of it to reinforce his online messaging.

“He can do a half-hour YouTube address every Saturday, addressing millions,” Trippi said. “The networks would never give the president that much television time each week, but the press is still going to have to cover what he says on YouTube.”

N.B.: Saturday’s video is only 3.5 minutes long, and I hope they’re going to leave it at that! Having to crank out half an hour every week, and having to sit through half an hour every week alike, can be a pretty daunting task!

It is interesting to see how the Obama campaigners use different accounts (and personas) to rally around different causes – the YouTube account previously used as Barack Obama’s social media outlet was BarackObamaDotCom, and the last message posted here was the Obama victory speech on Election night (by the way: the YouTube Account PresidentBarackObama has been suspended, but user PresidentObama already has four subscriber, one of them a certain Sara Palin )

The twitter account BarackObama, likewise, fell silent on Nov 5th, after the purpose for which it had been created was achieved. The last tweet reads:

We just made history. All of this happened because you gave your time, talent and passion. All of this happened because of you. Thanks

Tim O’Reilly proposed a tweet campaign yesterday to get the Obama team back into Twitter:

Let’s do a tweet campaign. Everyone send a message to @barackobama asking for a resumption of tweeting. And listening to tweets!

Again, my guess would be that Barack Obama’s twitter comes back to life on Jan 20. In the meantime, let’s keep an eye on Twitter User changedotgov – it seems as if a certain Matt Browne (mattsurfs) is the cyber squatter, but maybe he’ll donate it to the President-Elect for the promise of getting back on Twitter!

People just need their daily Obama media fix!

Flickr-Set: Obama in der Wahlnacht

Ihr habt’s eh schon gesehen: Das Obama-Bilder-Set auf Flickr mit Bildern vom Wahltag / der Wahlnacht – unter einer Creative Commons License veröffentlicht, die das Weiterverwenden erlaubt, wenn man angibt, woher die Bilder kommen, kommerzielle Nutzung ausgeschlossen (allerdings ist eh in keiner Rechtssprechung der Welt definiert, was eine kommerzielle Nutzung sein soll).

Bildquelle: David Katz/Obama for America auf Flickr

Die USA haben ein Imageproblem

Schwer zu sagen, welches das größere ist: Republikaner wählende Hausfrauen, die glauben, dass Barack Obama ein Terrorist ist (”Look at his bloodlines!”) oder demokratische, trunkene Rednecks, die es für ein Ding der Unmöglichkeit halten, in dieser Zeit (”We’re at war with the Middle-East!”) einen Präsidenten namens Barack Hussein Obama zu haben.

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Erinnert euch an Zurück in die Zukunft! Oder: Wenn Sarah Maskottchen (Präsidentin) ist

Über einem Forschungsproposal prokrastinierend kam mir heute abend die Erleuchtung – Sarah Palin mag nicht zu fassen sein, das war aber auch George Bush nicht und wenn sie den Job kriegt ist sie eh nur Marionette. Um so wahrscheinlicher ist es, dass das Republikanerpaket gut ankommt. Wir wissen schließlich worauf Amerika steht: gute Stories und gute Charaktere, und die sind mit der Hockey Mum geliefert. Hier ist schon mal der Trailer zum Film Head of Skate a.k.a Life after McCain.

Aus gegebenem Anlass deshalb noch einmal diesen illuminierenden Dialog aus Zurück in die Zukunft:

[Dr. Emmett Brown is doubting Marty McFly's story about that he is from the future]
Dr. Emmett Brown: Then tell me, “Future Boy”, who’s President in the United States in 1985?
Marty McFly: Ronald Reagan.
Dr. Emmett Brown: Ronald Reagan? The actor?
[chuckles in disbelief]
Dr. Emmett Brown: Then who’s VICE-President? Jerry Lewis?
[rushing out and down a hill toward his laboratory]
Dr. Emmett Brown: I suppose Jane Wyman is the First Lady!
Marty McFly: Whoa! Wait! Doc!
Dr. Emmett Brown: And Jack Benny is Secretary of the Treasury.
Marty McFly: Doc, you gotta listen to me.
Dr. Emmett Brown: I’ve had enough practical jokes for one evening. Good night, Future Boy!

Noch was für Sonntag, den 28.09.: Molterer will nun doch Rundfunkgebühren für den PC. Wer ihm das wohl auf der Medienmesse so kurz vor der Wahl noch rausgekitzelt hat?

Wahlen in den USA, das Netz, meine Nerven

Ich echauffiere mich gerade sehr über die Möglichkeit der Aussicht, dass im November das Team McCain/Palin die amerikanische Präsidentschaft übernimmt und lasse mich in meiner Erregung vom Netz speisen. In der Viral Video Chart dominiert das Thema US Elections zur Zeit etwa 8 von 10 Plätzen (selbst Will.i.ams Yes We Can ist dort wieder aufgetaucht) und auch via Blogs und Email kommt ein steter Zufluss an neuem Material herein. In Österreich darf ich ja nicht wählen, sonst würde ich mich vielleicht mehr darüber echauffieren (aber dazu gibt’s auch nicht so viel brauchbares Material im Netz).

Hier eine Auswahl, zum selber Aufregen oder ggfls. amüsieren.

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