Obama Admits That He’s Never Used Twitter, Thinks The Chinese Should Be Able To(techcrunch.com)
techcrunch.com
Obama Admits That He’s Never Used Twitter, Thinks The Chinese Should Be Able To
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/11/15/president-obama-twitter/
5 comments
The self-importance of the IT industry astonishes me sometimes. Twitter is awesome, but it's only a couple of years old, has just started taking it's first baby steps into the public consciousness, and is built on minuscule short-lived sound bites. How can anyone be seriously incredulous that a busy man (like a presidential candidate) has not gotten around to using it?
It's one thing if Obama just didn't get around to using it - that I'm sure we all can understand.
It's the idea that "he" was using Twitter, among other services (like an iPhone app..), as a tool to promote his presidential campaign very heavily towards certain demographics. Something that appealed to a lot of younger voters who believed then that he seemed to be very in-touch with that group as a result. Not to mention it wasn't the very idea of having a Twitter account for Obama (or any other politician) that was interesting, but that it appeared to be Obama himself writing the tweets, not someone else on his team.
It's the idea that "he" was using Twitter, among other services (like an iPhone app..), as a tool to promote his presidential campaign very heavily towards certain demographics. Something that appealed to a lot of younger voters who believed then that he seemed to be very in-touch with that group as a result. Not to mention it wasn't the very idea of having a Twitter account for Obama (or any other politician) that was interesting, but that it appeared to be Obama himself writing the tweets, not someone else on his team.
I don't think it's any different than the Twitter accounts of countless other politicians and public figures, many/most of which are actually ghost-written (e.g. http://twitter.com/SENJohnMcCain , which uses the first person).
Anyone who thought that Obama was personally authoring his Twitter feed is a little naive, IMHO.
Anyone who thought that Obama was personally authoring his Twitter feed is a little naive, IMHO.
It is naïve, but it wasn't an uncommon belief that Obama might have personally authored at least a few of those tweets, and certainly nobody stopped anyone from believing that. Not that I care either way at this point what he does or has done with that Twitter account.
I know plenty of other politicians and public figures have ghostwritten Twitter accounts. I was rather bummed to find out that the Mayor of LA had one ghostwritten while his office initially acted like he was either writing them himself or giving direct approval to tweets not written by him (and even a little drama over that whole incident).
I know plenty of other politicians and public figures have ghostwritten Twitter accounts. I was rather bummed to find out that the Mayor of LA had one ghostwritten while his office initially acted like he was either writing them himself or giving direct approval to tweets not written by him (and even a little drama over that whole incident).
That's right, miniscule short-lived sound bites for self important people who love to be "followed" by others.
Even though this sounds like it could have been invented by politicians I feel some relief that Obama does not waste his time on tweeting things like "Humbled".
Even though this sounds like it could have been invented by politicians I feel some relief that Obama does not waste his time on tweeting things like "Humbled".
I can understand that a president should make these types of publicity gimmicks, but having some one else to update your twitter account which 2 million people believe yours is unfair. Why admit now, why not before?
140 characters go a lot farther in Hanzi.
140 characters in Korean also go a long way. My Korean-speaking (and Chinese, for that matter) Twitter followers manage to write the English equivalent of entire paragraphs in 140 characters (and unfortunately, some of them like to rant in multiple tweets in a row instead of going to a blog to do so).
So while I see some tweets in Korean that are similar to ones in English where the message is short and to the point, they're side by side with those paragraph-like tweets that break how I read twitter because they're addressing something more deeply than would be possible in one tweet in English. I can only speculate this 140-character difference both ways also causes differences in use with other languages.
So while I see some tweets in Korean that are similar to ones in English where the message is short and to the point, they're side by side with those paragraph-like tweets that break how I read twitter because they're addressing something more deeply than would be possible in one tweet in English. I can only speculate this 140-character difference both ways also causes differences in use with other languages.
What's an estimate of the equivalent of 140 Hanzi characters in, say, English?
美利坚合众国（英文：USA ），简稱美國，旧称花旗國，是由50个州和一个聯邦地區组成的聯邦立宪制共和国。美国本土位於北美洲中部，东濒大西洋，西滨太平洋，北靠加拿大，南接墨西哥及墨西哥湾；首都华盛顿哥伦比亚特区与除夏威夷州和阿拉斯加州之外的48个州都位于美國本土。
This is half of the first paragraph of the simplified Chinese entry for the United States in Wikipedia. I cheated a bit to bring it under length: the 英文 portion actually spelled out United States of America. It clocks in at about 138 characters.
A rough translation from someone who is not literate in Chinese just to show you the information density:
---
The United States of America (English: USA), referred to commonly as the United States, formerly known as the United States [editor's note: anachronistic Chinese 花旗國 rather than 美國], consist of 50 states and one federal district, forming a constitutionally established federal republic. The United States is located in the center of North America, bounded on the east by the Atlantic Ocean and in the west by the Pacific Ocean, on the north by Canada and the South by Mexico and the Gulf of Mexico. The capital is Washington, DC. It is comprised of Hawaii, Alaska, and the 48 contiguous states.
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[Edit: I was curious so I checked in Japanese, too, to substantiate my feeling that it would be at the midpoint between Chinese and English. Yep.
アメリカ合衆国（アメリカがっしゅうこく、英：United States of America）、通称アメリカまた合衆国（合州国）、米国（べいこく）は、北アメリカ大陸および北太平洋に位置する連邦共和国。 イギリスの北米植民地が1776年7月4日に独立を宣言して成立した国家である。
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The United States of America (insert pronunciation guide in Japanese here, English: United States of America), usually referred to as America, the United States (the US), or another way to say the US in Japanese is a federal republic located on the North American continent and in the north Pacific Ocean.
The United States of America was founded a nation when the North American colonies declared their independence from England on July 4th, 1776.]
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And, for the comparison to English, here is what fits in a Tweet:
The United States of America (commonly referred to as the United States, the U.S., the USA, or America) is a federal constitutional republic
There wasn't enough space for the period.
This is half of the first paragraph of the simplified Chinese entry for the United States in Wikipedia. I cheated a bit to bring it under length: the 英文 portion actually spelled out United States of America. It clocks in at about 138 characters.
A rough translation from someone who is not literate in Chinese just to show you the information density:
---
The United States of America (English: USA), referred to commonly as the United States, formerly known as the United States [editor's note: anachronistic Chinese 花旗國 rather than 美國], consist of 50 states and one federal district, forming a constitutionally established federal republic. The United States is located in the center of North America, bounded on the east by the Atlantic Ocean and in the west by the Pacific Ocean, on the north by Canada and the South by Mexico and the Gulf of Mexico. The capital is Washington, DC. It is comprised of Hawaii, Alaska, and the 48 contiguous states.
---
[Edit: I was curious so I checked in Japanese, too, to substantiate my feeling that it would be at the midpoint between Chinese and English. Yep.
アメリカ合衆国（アメリカがっしゅうこく、英：United States of America）、通称アメリカまた合衆国（合州国）、米国（べいこく）は、北アメリカ大陸および北太平洋に位置する連邦共和国。 イギリスの北米植民地が1776年7月4日に独立を宣言して成立した国家である。
---
The United States of America (insert pronunciation guide in Japanese here, English: United States of America), usually referred to as America, the United States (the US), or another way to say the US in Japanese is a federal republic located on the North American continent and in the north Pacific Ocean.
The United States of America was founded a nation when the North American colonies declared their independence from England on July 4th, 1776.]
---
And, for the comparison to English, here is what fits in a Tweet:
The United States of America (commonly referred to as the United States, the U.S., the USA, or America) is a federal constitutional republic
There wasn't enough space for the period.
Or for a more quantitative approach, with 1.7 Chinese characters per English word[1] and an average English word length at 5.1 letters[2], then somewhere around 420 characters.
(But of course, it really depends on the nature of the text.)
[1] http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/002379.h... [2] http://blogamundo.net/lab/wordlengths/
(But of course, it really depends on the nature of the text.)
[1] http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/002379.h... [2] http://blogamundo.net/lab/wordlengths/
In other words, if your characters contain more information your words get shorter, that seems to be a pretty logical consequence.
English clocks in at about 5 bits per character, so 140 characters is about 700 bits of data. The unicode representation of the Chinese text above is 378 bytes, and it can be compressed only a little bit (about 20%).
'Number of characters' is not a very good way to measure information density I think, especially not when 'character' is something that is variable length.
English clocks in at about 5 bits per character, so 140 characters is about 700 bits of data. The unicode representation of the Chinese text above is 378 bytes, and it can be compressed only a little bit (about 20%).
'Number of characters' is not a very good way to measure information density I think, especially not when 'character' is something that is variable length.
Does Twitter still offer 140 characters in Hanzi? ('How Stuff Works' says SMS only offers 70 characters in Hanzi, rather than 160... so I suspect the Twitter limit might be similarly truncated.)
This once again shows us that Obama has an insanely great public relations team.
I'm shocked -- shocked! -- that after the House health bill last week Obama didn't type this tweet into his "✔ Verified Account" himself:
http://twitter.com/BarackObama/status/5523912708
http://twitter.com/BarackObama/status/5523912708