Open Thread: Obama's Twitter Town Hall

July 6th, 2011 10:10 AM

In another effort to engage the online community once bubbling with support for President Barack Obama, Obama will participate in a Twitter town hall today at 2 pm EDT to answer questions on jobs and the economy posed by Twitter users with the hashtag #askobama.

The questions Obama answers will be handpicked by Twitter staffers and pre-selected Twitter users, who will be tracking the popularity and geographical distribution of the questions to determine which questions to ask Obama. Don't expect any hardball questions, though. As Michelle Malkin points out, the moderator of the town hall, Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, is a close friend of the administration as a State Department adviser.

Will you be participating? Let us know what you think of Obama's latest online engagement effort in the comments.

Dorsey isn't Obama's only friend on the Twitter team, though. As Malkin explains,

Chief exec Dick Costolo is a telecom/national security adviser. And in the other direction, former State Department aide Katie Stanton is now a Twitter “vice president of global policy.” It’s a recipe for another softball forum a la the Facebook town hall in April. Your tax dollars at work.

Are you going to tweet any #askobama questions this afternoon? Let us know what you would ask the president below.