Barak Obama posting to Quora to Sell Iran Treaty

[ergophobe]

Interesting bit of social media marketing going on - Barak Obama, who recently appeared on the Marc Maron podcast, has now started answering questions on Quora

Would rejecting the Iran deal lead the US into war?
[quora.com...]

Can Iran's leaders be trusted?
[quora.com...]

How does the Iran nuclear deal prevent them from getting weapons?
[quora.com...]

What does this mean for Quora?

What does it mean for future politicians?

What's next for Obama, a Reddit AMA?

Please Note: This question is about the impact of the president of the United States participating on Quora, not about US Politics, Barak Obama's actions/policies, Iran's leaders or any other topic that will surely get your post edited or deleted.

[edited by: ergophobe at 11:50 pm (utc) on Sep 10, 2015]

[tangor]

Nah, an Obama based adblocker.

And an AMA would terrify that fellow!

[ken_b]

Please Note: This question is about the impact of the president of the United States participating on Quora, not about US Politics,

Nice disclaimer, but you can't separate the two, and a disclaimer doesn't make it non-political.

None of these questions are non-political

Would rejecting the Iran deal lead the US into war?
[quora.com...]

Can Iran's leaders be trusted?
[quora.com...]

How does the Iran nuclear deal prevent them from getting weapons?
[quora.com...]

What does this mean for Quora?

What does it mean for future politicians?

What's next for Obama, a Reddit AMA?

[tangor]

Opps! The disclaimer came some time after I posted and before I saw it and then could not edit my reply to not make it political that all the political hacks everywhere (US and UK in particular) are using social media of all kinds to spew, er, "share" with those connected on the web in one fashion or the other (a markedly smaller number than general mainstream broadcasing services like radio, tv, and print media).

FB was favored in the past by POTUS, some Twitter, now Quora. Nothing new, nothing here, move along, please. :)

But I really would like a bho adblocker! :)

(and bho is browser helper object, not Barack Hussain Obama which keeps this on a tech level, not politics)

[ergophobe]

>>The disclaimer came some time after I posted

Yes, I realized the potential to skid out of control and thought something was called for.

>>you can't separate the two... None of these questions are non-political

Actually, I think my questions are non-political. I would consider them "cultural" - the interesting part to me is not the questions or answers. I assume that was a setup - that is the Obama people tasked someone with posting the questions and someone with writing the answers and running them by Obama for a quick read.

>>FB was favored in the past by POTUS

I didn't know that. And by POTUS you mean Obama or even earlier? Did Bush use FB?

>>Twitter

Yeah, 140 characters. It's hard to lay out an argument like this in 140 characters.

If I were running for president right now, I would be watching these last moves by Obama very carefully. Going on Marc Maron's podcast and putting out policy statements on Quora is interesting to me because among other things I think they are places where he connects with people who are passionate, but often completely detached from the mainstream media and the political process.

Do any of the current candidates for either party have any presence at all on Quora, Reddit, large-scale podcasts? If it's happening, I'm missing it. Strangely, it's the guy who's not running for anything anymore that's out there.

[ergophobe]

I'm not really interested in the horserace party politics dimension, but traditionally presidents have made new media and new media have made presidents. There's always a delay until someone "gets it" like FDR with the radio and JFK with the television. But strangely, between JFK and Reagan, I don't think we actually had a president who knew how to use television effectively.

I think we finally reached a generation where all presidents are "TV natives" and do reasonably well on TV (if they don't, they don't become president).

But none of the candidates are "internet native" let alone "social media native".

I just find it interesting that the president is on Quora (and a podcast) lately and that, as near as I can tell, none of the people who are actually running for office are doing anything new.

[tangor]

There really isn't anything new, but the dirty tricks department (which has been around since William conquered England, is moving to the new media.

Obama's first election made great use of the net. His second did as well, but by that time "ad blindness" had been achieved and, as a result, all the political hacks, er, candidates have SOMETHING out there, and it is being IGNORED by a few.

Meanwhile, the dirty tricks department (any side, and viewpoint) continue to run rampant... and if there was no internet, it would be chalk on sidewalks or spray paint on the sides of buildings.

Obama on Quora is a blip. Trump (ie) on Fallon was a nova. The best ratings in years for that late night venue. But that is apples and oranges, one is net, the other is MSM. Can we equate the two? Probably not.

The net is steady general political news (and growing!). MSM remains the clout, but one of the neat things about the web is one can AVOID x and SEEK y ... and share same with your FB, Twits, etc with just a click of a button! And tell MSM to go fly a kite. :)

[ergophobe]

>>But that is apples and oranges

Maybe. I think Obama's experiments with podcasts are an effort to connect with disaffected voters. I suspect Fallon's audience has a lot of them too. Though of course no candidate will turn down a Fallon appearance because it's a known, it's familiar, it's standard retail politics.

But you raise a good point - the problem with being a follower on the internet (meaning "Hey that worked for Obama in 2008, let's try that") is that banner blindness and ad blocking and so on come along so fast that what worked eight years ago has a decent chance of being worthless today.