Millions of tweeting pundits

The Twitterverse was all abuzz Tuesday as President Barack Obama delivered his State of the Union address. The speech still holds an air of formality, but there is no doubt that the instant nature of social media is changing how the message is delivered as well as received.

The State of the Union Address is traditionally delivered near the end of January and is meant to highlight the successes of the past year as well as lay out the president’s agenda for the coming year. As the most important speech the president makes every year, every major network and cable news channel carries the speech live along with the opposing party’s rebuttal. With the explosion of social media, however, the traditional suit and tie pundits might have finally met their match.

Here are a few thoughts about how social media effected this year’s State of the Union:

We are all pundits

Twitter provided a way for viewpoints from thousands of people to be heard in real time as the president delivered the message. Now, instead of listening to analysis from a handful selected pundits, we were given access to thousands of sources that either repudiated or confirmed the facts and figures of the speech. I could post a link to an article that supports the president’s claim of the private sector adding jobs for 22 straight months, while Speaker of the House John Boehner can post his own ‘facts’. Erik Wemple of the Washington Post goes as far to suggest that Twitter and social media are replacing the traditional pundits and the official response from the opposing party. Social media opens up more channels for which we can all have a voice in the political process.

Got Milk? We can choose the message we want to hear

Prior to Twitter and social media, the discussion after the speech would be dictated by the networks, cable news channels and a handful of online publications. Now we have the option of digging deeper into a particular subject we are interested in or share with others what we thought was interesting. We can see other people’s opinions, both important people (John Boehner) and not so important people (me!). What was the most important message that people tweeted about during the speech? Yep, spilled milk (in reference to a comment Obama made about a regulation effecting dairy farmers).

Instant critics = instant response

I wrote about how  Obama uses Twitter to his advantage and here he is again embracing technology and leveraging it to his advantage. The immediacy of the ability for critics to attack his statements calls for an equally quick response. The following video appeared on Whitehouse.gov and is now available on YouTube. Notice how the enhanced version uses charts and visual cues to support his message. Obama is a shrewd politician and he again proves it by anticipating  the republican’s response and jumping out in front.