Reddit, or the Front Page of the Internet, is a social news
website where the registered users submit content, in the form of
either a link or a text post. Other users then vote the
submission "up" or "down", which is used to rank the post and determine
its position on the site's pages and front page. The more up votes, the higher you move up on the site's pages.
Check out the site, here.
Basically, Reddit is a hugely powerful resource. With its gaining popularity, information posted on Reddit can be tagged and widespread quickly throughout the internet. Sounds like something that could become of great use to, say, the President of the United State, doesn't it?
And that's exactly what President Obama did.
Starting this afternoon, and with less than 30 minutes warning prior to the explosive event, President Barack Obama answered redditors’ questions about
war, taxes, basketball, and even beer, through an AmA chat. In Reddit jargon, AmA means, "Ask Me Anything."
As verifications of the president's identity and participation, the chat was linked to his verified Twitter account and an image was posted.
The site ended up nearly crashing under the weight of the 200,000 plus redditors participating in the chat as Obama's AmA went viral. This resulted in many users opening the site only to receive error messages under the pressure of so much site traffic. Reddit still remains in the clean-up process as of this evening.
Though the motive behind the president's choosing to appear on Reddit has not been commented on, it is clear that he is looking to sway the votes of the younger voters and those of them that remain undecided. On the other hand, Romney (R), is sticking with more traditional campaign techniques.
So, the president's an official Redditor now--verified and everything. What does this say about this year's race for the presidency? What does this say about media dependency in America? World-wide? I think it says an awful lot. Now, not only are our candidates on Twitter, Facebook, etc., they're breaking into even newer forms of media and using it to boost their campaigns.
Now we face the fast-approaching question of, "Who will get up voted to president in the 2012 Election?"
