Is President-Elect Barack Obama a Social Media Stalker?
Posted on November 19th, 2008 by Paul Woodhouse in Government Marketing, Social Media
TAGS: blackberry, chage.gov, president elect obama, transition, youtube weekling presidential address
President-elect Barack Obama to have his Blackberry-induced smile wiped off his face?
The world is made up of two types of people – those who think Barack Obama is the Messiah, and those who think he’s a very naughty boy. In amongst that lot are a curious group of Web 2.0 evangelists who think the election was really a win for social media.
Whatever…
Obama’s campaign obviously used the tools at his disposal wisely and correctly amongst various demographics. Good marketing relies on horses for courses – his utilization of the pony express to tap into the Amish community was just as inspired as setting up a facebook page. Oh, and never mind the fact that he had more money at his disposal than a small third world dictatorship.
There’s some lip-smacking irony, though, in the news that Obama (do I have to call him President-elect? What’s the protocol?) might not be able to use his Blackberry while in office. No, it has nothing to do with John McCain spitefully revoking licenses on the device he allegedly helped invent, but concerns about security and the Presidential Records Act. It also probably looks a little dubious if you’re caught texting Scarlett Johansson under the table at the some G8 get together.
Reports suggest he may find his Blackberry habit particularly difficult to kick. So, in order to calm the cravings, he’s looking to be the first president to have a laptop in the Oval Office. I hope he doesn’t intend on using it to record his weekly addresses to the nation on YouTube. I think the Commander-in-Chief can afford to forego authenticity in the form of jittery lo-res camera work and other amateur production values.
I presume we also won’t be subject to any tweets referencing boarding Air Force One while feeling giddily pumped about meeting Gordon Brown.
Now if you’re excited enough by Obama that you’d like to work in his administration serving the American people, there’s a section of the President-elect’s transition Website – Change.gov – that allows you to formally apply.
Does anybody know how you used to apply for this kind of work in the good old days?
Before you start dusting off your resume, you may want to make yourself aware of some of the hoops you have to jump through as part of the vetting process. The seven page questionnaire involves:
• 63 requests for personal or professional records
• Asking if you or a family member owns a gun (presumably an appended question inquires how hard you cling to it)
• Including links to all your blog posts and social networking pages
• Listing all your aliases and handles on the Internet
Obviously I’ll hand this over to you in the comments as to whether you consider this to overtly invasive and excessive.
Were the Stasi in East Germany ever this intrusive? Should your online pursuits be private and placed in a similar non-discriminatory category as religious views or sexual preference? Or is it just a case of sorting the wheat from the chaff before the FBI wastes valuable time sorting through applicants’ virtual dirty laundry?
Or is it just the type of change only men with overtly jealous partners can believe in?
Post: Is President-Elect Barack Obama a Social Media Stalker? http://twurl.nl/6pif0w
Trackback by Paul Woodhouse on November 19, 2008
@Paul – It’s interesting to see how far and fast online reputation management is moving. I understand the impetus and think that IF anyone’s going to go that far it should be a political campaign. They are (and have always been) so nasty. Political campaigns act like NFL coordinators that study the opposition intently looking for any weakness to exploit.
It might not get this far in the general sector, but it will likely move that way. How many HR folks are already looking through the social media sites for this information; PE Obama just goes a step further in asking for it (which also means you can be fired if they found out you didn’t include anything).
There are two major problems that I see with this type of questioning generally:
1. All of us have skeletons – is someone going to use common sense in the review?
2. There is a period when social media started becoming popular where the pitfalls were even less understood than today. Many of those that were students, say, in 2004 & 2005 are more apt to have embarrassing information online.
Whatever the case, be prepared people. Remember that anything you tweet, blog, or update about online will be there forever and can be found.
Comment by Justin Seibert on November 20, 2008
I would be a little worried about all my online handles being given to my new employer. Some of those pages contain personal information you only want close personal friends and family to view. Would the government ask you to disclose all personal letters ever received – i think not. I hope they use common sense when coming through my online life. There are things on face book i would not like potential employers to see.
Comment by Internet Marketing blog on November 20, 2008
Having been a junior at WVU when Facebook took over, I figure I’ll share my perspective since Justin brought it up.
In 2004 I didn’t really “get” what Facebook was supposed to accomplish. As far as I was concerned, it was just a goofy expansion of AOL’s “Personal Profile” mechanism and an alternative to the creepy MySpace (which I STILL would not be on if it weren’t for my music career making it a necessity). Sure, on Facebook you could write on walls and exchange private messages… but wasn’t that what AIM and EMAIL was for?
It wasn’t until Facebook introduced the “My Photos” application that I saw any benefit to the site at all… then, as we liked to say in ‘04, “it was on like Donky Kong.”
Dear Webshots:
You’ve been replaced by a hotter, younger digital photo album. It’s not you, it’s me. Actually, that’s a lie. It’s totally you.
Have fun in retirement.
Sincerely,
Derrick
After that, I noticed EVERYBODY (including myself) had an obscene amount of pictures posted of the night before every Saturday and Sunday morning (and sometimes Wednesday mornings… and Friday mornings… but I digress). Within a few months it wasn’t uncommon for the majority of my friends to have hundreds of personal Bud Light endorsements peppered about. After a while, the entire thing turned into a game of oneupmanship.
“Make sure you take your camera out tonight! Let’s take some ridiculous photos for Facebook!”
It went on like that for some time and nobody felt any fear about what went up because – after all – Facebook was only open to those with university e-mail accounts. Then the Residence Hall Coordinators started handing out write-ups (through me, which wasn’t cool but neither was I as an RA!) to residents who chronicled their Brooke Hall pre-game sessions digitally.
“Hmm.. maybe we should be a bit more discrete?”
Pretty soon we heard tales of students getting caught cheating by professors after writing on another student’s wall “Hey! Send me that Excel project for Dr. Wood’s class once you finish it!”
F.
Anyways, in graduate school our professors begged and pleaded with us to take down any and all alcohol related photo; a reasonable request seeing as how we were in the “elite” job market, as they liked to put it. For some of us, that meant 90-95% of our online presence disappeared. After all, we were college students. For others, it wasn’t a big deal. For me, with my “point of pride attitude” I had a hard time taking every single picture.
“I’m not about to act like there is something wrong with going out and grabbing some beers with your friends on a Friday and Saturday night! If they aren’t going to hire me because of a bottle of Guinness, so be it! I don’t want to work there anyways!”
… eventually, on my own terms and at my own speed, I realized that too-much-information really could become detrimental to my professional life at some point. I cleaned out all the photos, I tidied up the text on my profile, and deleted anything remotely controversial.
My profile is now incredibly bland… but hey… I’ve got a good salary, health benefits, and a fridge filled with Sam Adams rather than Bud Light. Life is good and, from the looks of it on Facebook, I am too.
The only point of concern for me is wall posts. I’m not a diabolical person, but I do enjoy a slightly off-base sense of humor, as do most of my friends. They like to joke about my “Irishness” and I like to joke about their “Italianness” (I put both nicely). We crack up in our on merry manner and go about our lives. Seeing as how I have some political aspirations, that could be something comes back to bite me, at which point I’ll probably get defensive, tell people to lighten up, and lose the election.
… or maybe I’ll just change all of my display information to “P.J. McFlufferson.” That’ll fool the gotcha mainstream media.
Comment by Derrick on November 20, 2008
@mfinch – Thanks for stopping by. I think the two should be separate, but that’s going to be harder and harder to do. If you take steps to guard your privacy and anything you do that could hurt their reputation can’t be found (or don’t do anything period), then it should be immaterial. PS – Great example of link building from your latest post.
Comment by Justin Seibert on November 20, 2008
Is President-Elect Barack Obama a Social Media Stalker? http://short.to/ciwu
Trackback by Brandon Rayford on May 30, 2009