obama

Twitter launches dedicated presidential debate page

Whether you're a political junkie or someone just starting to pay attention to next month's presidential election, tonight's first debate between President Barack Obama and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney is sure to provide tons of conversation fodder. And Twitter wants to be right in the middle of it.

Already, Twitter has dispatched members of its @gov team to Denver, where they plan to monitor the debate from up close and keep track of how the massive Twitter user base responds to each and every barb, attack, evasion, and even the occasional thoughtful answer. And to help … Read more

Senator urges Obama to issue 'cybersecurity' executive order

Senate Homeland Security Committee Chairman Joe Lieberman sent a letter to President Obama today urging him to use his executive power and publish "advisory" guidelines on a cybersecurity order.

"Countless national security leaders from your Administration and the previous Administration have made clear that the threat from cyber attack is similar to the threat we faced from terrorism on September 10, 2001 -- the danger is real and imminent, yet we have not acted to defend against it," Lieberman wrote. "We know our adversaries are already stealing valuable intellectual property and exploiting our critical infrastructure … Read more

Rumor Has It: The anti-iPhone 5 episode

Well, the iPhone event finally happened, and now we have nothing to talk about.

Just kidding!

We decided that everyone must be sick of talking about the new iPhone, so we did everyone a favor -- including ourselves -- and talked about everything but that. Hallelujah!

On this week's show, we continue to not care about HTC's possible tablets; we talk to TechCrunch's favorite sources and learn that a browser-based version of Spotify might be in the works; and on Thursday we will finally learn Wii U pricing and its release date -- that's almost two … Read more

Obama and the iPhone: No common ground?

Agreement in politics seems about as common as subtlety in Charlie Sheen.

The media find glee in reporting the latest skirmish, the latest name-calling, the latest tit-for-tit. Who can be surprised, then, that recent reports suggest the President and the iPhone simply don't see eye to ear?

As the Washington Times dialed it in, the President was in Port St. Lucie, Fla. a couple of days ago and decided to call some campaign workers.

Marvin Nicholson, his trip director, offered up his own iPhone for the task, one that became a little more arduous than some might have imagined.… Read more

Obama DNC speech triggers record 52,757 tweets per minute

President Barack Obama has set a new record, at least on Twitter.

The president's speech at the Democratic National Convention yesterday lit up the Twittersphere with 52,757 tweets per minute, a new record for the micro-blogging site, Twitter has revealed.

Overall, the DNC has generated heavy traffic on Twitter. From the starting festivities on Tuesday to the closing events last night, more than 9.5 million tweets about the convention have made the rounds. The final day saw around 4 million tweets alone, according to Twitter, many of them sent during Obama's speech.

The 4 million one-day … Read more

Obama Facebook app lets users show they're watching the DNC

Facebook is becoming part of the Democratic National Convention viewing game hours before President Obama gives his speech accepting his party's nomination for a second term in office.

With the launch of the Obama 2012 Social Sharing App, which is available on the Obama-Biden Web site, viewers can share on their timelines that they're watching the speech. Users can simply click on the Facebook share button and answer some preference questions to get the app started. Information is here.

The app was noted in a post on Facebook's U.S. Politics on Facebook page.

The Obama campaign … Read more

DNC livestream on YouTube blocked on copyright grounds?

Those hoping to catch the livestream of First Lady Michelle Obama's speech at the Democratic National Convention on YouTube or BarackObama.com can forget about it -- it appears to have been blocked.

The event's official stream was yanked due to copyright infringement concerns, according to a message that briefly appeared on YouTube:

This video contains content from WMG, SME, Associated Press (AP), UMG, Dow Jones, New York Times Digital, The Harry Fox Agency, Inc. (HFA), Warner Chappell, UMPG Publishing and EMI Music Publishing, one or more of whom have blocked it in your country on copyright grounds. … Read more

Obama's response to Eastwood most re-tweeted tweet of RNC

While the Clint Eastwood speech and the acclaimed director's lecturing of an invisible President Obama stole the media spotlight during the Republican National Convention in Tampa, it was Obama's terse response via Twitter that received the most re-tweets during the GOP's big event in Florida.

A Twitter spokesperson told Talking Points Memo that the president's tweet -- which read "This seat's taken" and was accompanied with the above shot of a certain big-eared and very visible Democrat in the presidential chair -- was re-tweeted over 50,000 times. That made it the biggest … Read more

Reddit: Obama visit generates most activity ever

President Barack Obama broke all the campaigning rules when he held an unmoderated Q&A session on one of the Internet's most infamous socially aggregated new sites -- and he also broke a Reddit record.

Obama's session on Reddit yesterday attracted more user activity than any other single submission to the forum, more than even the site's front page, Reddit revealed today in a stats breakdown of the virtual visit.

By the end of the day yesterday, the site had clocked nearly 3 million page views for the submission and the number kept growing by the … Read more