Obama's Twitter Gaffe

Unless you have been living under a rock for the past few weeks, you are all too aware of America's impending debt crises. With the threat of a default looming closer, our boneheaded Congressman vegetate in Washington, unable to come to any sort of agreement on raising the debt ceiling. Meanwhile, Americans have become increasingly irritated, and our president is no exception. On Friday afternoon, Obama let his frustration be known via Twitter, where he tweeted the handles of each Republican Congressman, and urged citizens to voice their opinions. Many of Obama's recent tweets contained the #compromise hashtag to emphasize cooperation across party lines.

So, did Obama's #compromise campaign serve as a catalyst for solving the problem? Not exactly. In fact, it seems it may have backfired on him. @BarackObama lost around 37,000 of his 9.4 million followers in the following 24-hour period. Sure, this is only a 0.04% loss for the big chief, but it clearly illustrates that no one is invincible in the world of social media. If people view your contributions as noise, they are simply going to "unfollow" or "unfriend" you. Simple as that. In addition, any action taken on social media opens you up to criticism from the other side. Patrick McHenry, Republican Congressman from North Carolina, tweeted this: "Looking forward to all the new followers @BarackObama sends my way today in his Twitter spam campaign." Ah, politics at its finest.

My Initial Thoughts on Google+

I have been playing around with Google+ for about a week now, after receiving a highly-coveted invitation from a friend. I have to say that I'm impressed with the polished interface, the ease of sharing content, and the "Hangout" video chatting feature. I also like the idea of separating my connections into "circles," as I don't necessarily want my co-workers seeing all the same content as my close friends. Although the site as a whole is a bit derivative, there are undoubtedly a lot of great ideas at play.

Unfortunately, I couldn't find too many familiar faces on Google+, but that's too be expected since the product is still in beta. After all, Facebook and Twitter were similarly barren the first few months after release Another gripe is with the "Sparks" feature. Instead of displaying a stream of relevant content, the main page features ten pictures of generic interests, forcing users to go to the sidebar to select each interest individually (this will make more sense when you're actually using the site, I promise!)

The biggest hurdle Google+ faces is that it's unfashionably late to the game. Everyone is already on Facebook, and many people feel that they don't need or even want another social network. A small cadre of tech-savvy individuals is eagerly embracing Google+, but what about my parents, or my decidedly less geeky friends? How will I be able to convince them that they are missing out by not joining? Right now, I don't have an answer to that question.

To conclude, I highly doubt that Google+ will overtake Facebook as the king of social networking sites. Facebook has simply become too big and too ingrained in our culture. However, Google+ certainly proves an interesting diversion, and as more people join in the coming weeks/months, I envision spending a decent amount of time there.