The history of Obama's presidency marked by hashtags. Now that's clever!

Here's why:

When we first decided to make a campaign T-shirt just for Twitter users, we spent a while thinking about the hashtag that does the best job of summing up what we're fighting for.

We decided it's #Progress, because we've accomplished a lot together these last three years—from #DADT to #AffordableCare—and we've got the hashtags to prove it.

This is a limited run of shirts, so make sure to get yours today for $25.They're 100% cotton and 100% made in America, and though we haven't counted we're pretty sure everything on them adds up to 140 characters or fewer.

(Have an idea for another Twitter shirt design? Tweet us @BarackObama.)

*Get it here.

Using Twitter to Learn if Irene Has Destroyed All I Own

I have weathered many hurricanes in my life. Twice I have even had the eye of a hurricane pass right above where I lived (once in New England, once in Virginia). However, this time with Hurricane Irene, is a little scarier for my family: I am right in the middle of moving from the UK to the NYC area and all of my worldly goods are sitting in one 20-foot shipping container just south of Newark Airport—if the area floods we lose everything we own.

Not surprisingly, I have been spending much time trying to find out if Irene has flooded this very important (to me) storage warehouse. Calling the emergency telephone numbers to ask would be irresponsible: emergency personnel are working 24x7 to ensure public safety; it is important to let them do their jobs safely. As such, I have turned to the Internet to find out what is happening.

I looked the websites of the National Hurricane Center, the City of Newark, and various (global and local) news sites. They were good, but almost entirely focused on regional updates, not local ones. They could not tell me if the neighborhoods I was most concerned about were “o.k.”—or if it was time to dig out the telephone numbers for the insurer of my move.

It turns out I found the best information on Twitter. Specifically, I the Tweets by @CityofNewarkNJ (Official Twitter Account of the City of Newark) and @CoryBooker (Newark’s Mayor) have been the most useful. They have told me exactly which streets are flooded and even include pictures of flooding (to let you know how bad things are). The information they are posting is up-to-date, topical, local, accurate—and tremendously beneficial.

So far, we are doing o.k. I am still keeping my fingers crossed—especially for the thousands of families much closer to flooding and the thousands of people trying to help keep them safe. However, I am very grateful that cities like Newark are embracing every channel at their disposal—including new channels like Twitter—to keep their citizens informed.

Read more: http://technorati.com/blogging/article/using-twitter-to-learn-if-irene/#ixzz1...

Both a diehard Chipotle fan and a person who doesn't eat pork, Seth Porges was surprised to discover recently that the pinto beans he'd been eating for years from there are actually cooked with a little bit of bacon. Within two hours of emailing top execs and tweeting about it, he received a personal phonecall from Steve Ells, CEO of Chipotle.

It seems the general policy is that if the customer orders other meat products along with the pinto beans — Porges usually orders the chicken — the counter staff doesn't usually tell them that the pinto beans are cooked with bacon.

That's going to change. Within two hours, Ells called to apologize and said that Porges's tweets and email had prompted him to order the entire chain to change their in-store menus to reflect that the pinto beans were cooked with bacon.

Chipotle confirmed the change to Consumerist. "The menu panels have been redesigned to reflect that change, and the plan is to deliver them to restaurants along with other changes to the menu boards over the next several months," Chris Arnold, Communications Director for Chiptole, told Consumerist.

"Was extremely impressed as Chipotle's quick and personal response," Porges told Consumerist. "Just a model of great PR: attend to the problem, apologize, and create a solution."

"Look forward to eating there lots more in the future," he added.

Original article here. 

Social media storm: Farmers take to Twitter

Updated August 17, 2011 20:30:55

For an hour-and-a-half on Sunday Landline was at the centre of a Twitter storm.

We didn't see it coming, and now we're trying to make sense of, and understand the significance of what unfolded.

Have we just been given a supercharged masterclass in how social media is changing the way individuals and businesses communicate?

Or, is this just how one small, super chatty segment of the community communicates?

Is this niche or major? Is this fundamental change or a passing fad?

I don't know.

What I saw on Sunday though, shook me up.

So what happened?

How a simple hashtag call on a Sunday news program triggered a firestorm among agricultural communities in Australia and the US.

A young club DJ cycling around urban Bristol on his fixed-wheel bike has quickly emerged as a hero of the riots, after setting up a Twitter feed offering unbiased and accurate information about the disturbances.

Leon Piers, a 21-year-old house DJ, music blogger and producer, set up his Twitter feed @BristolRiots the morning after the city saw looting, attacks on shops, confrontations with police and arson incidents during Monday night.

Supported by several friends around the city, Piers cycled the often hilly streets around the epicentres of the unrest – St Pauls, Stokes Croft, Cabot Circus and Broadmead – on his custom-built bike, covering about 35 miles in under two days and putting out over 200 bulletins and requests for information.

In little over a day, his feed had attracted more than 3,000 followers and applause from the city's police, councillors and local media. It was cited as further evidence that social media, abused by rioters and their supporters, could have great positive value.

Piers, who moved to the Frenchay area of Bristol a year ago, has promised to tweet only verified and unbiased information about any incidents, and to kill off rumours, "folklore" or speculation.

The city was tense and edgy late into Tuesday night as small groups of youths gathered, the police faced down angry residents and a minibus in St Pauls was set on fire, but any disturbances were smothered by the heavy police presence.

As inaccurate rumours of violence circulated and spooked residents jumped on mythical incidents, he decided that if there was no photograph or verified first person testimony, it would not be blogged.

Apart from insisting on neutrality – he declined Avon and Somerset police requests to retweet its messages– he had a bold threat too.

"There were three or four friends dotted around Bristol who I was using as my most solid sources," he said. He quickly invited other residents to send in reports. "I was telling people, 'only send me something if you can send me a picture or if I can talk on the phone'. If they lied to me, I would post their name on Twitter and tell people they were lying about riots."

That never became necessary. "Everyone has been brilliant," Piers said.

On his Twitter account biography, he describes his service as "A guy on a bike & A group of friends, dotted around Bristol, bringing you only CONFIRMED riot news & Keeping you updated so you can stay safe!" [sic]

He set up the feed after leaving home on Tuesday to watch the aftermath of Monday's disturbances, which have not since been repeated, and realised there was no Bristol riots information service or hashtag.

He decided "I might as well catch what's happening, and chances are I can get people up-to-date, and that's what I have really been doing, just in the hope of quashing any rumours and just keeping people up-to-date on what's going on," he said.

"I really don't have a strong opinion on what's happening in any sense," he said. "I try to keep things as neutral as possible."

He added: "I've been trying to do it in a way that people don't think I'm coming across as high and mighty, or high on morals. I'm just trying to do something to keep people calm."

If there are no further disturbances, he plans to keep using the feed to organise and promote events clearing up the city, and as a city blog.

Scientists from Indiana University and the University of Manchester recently published findings proving that social media has an 86.7% accuracy rate at predicting the stock market. 

Abstract

Behavioral economics tells us that emotions can profoundly affect individual behavior and decision-making. Does this also apply to societies at large, i.e. can societies experience mood states that affect their collective decision making? By extension is the public mood correlated or even predictive of economic indicators? Here we investigate whether measurements of collective mood states derived from large-scale Twitter feeds are correlated to the value of the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) over time. We analyze the text content of daily Twitter feeds by two mood tracking tools, namely OpinionFinder that measures positive vs. negative mood and Google-Profile of Mood States (GPOMS) that measures mood in terms of 6 dimensions (Calm, Alert, Sure, Vital, Kind, and Happy). We cross-validate the resulting mood time series by comparing their ability to detect the public's response to the presidential election and Thanksgiving day in 2008. A Granger causality analysis and a Self-Organizing Fuzzy Neural Network are then used to investigate the hypothesis that public mood states, as measured by the OpinionFinder and GPOMS mood time series, are predictive of changes in DJIA closing values. Our results indicate that the accuracy of DJIA predictions can be significantly improved by the inclusion of specific public mood dimensions but not others. We find an accuracy of 86.7% in predicting the daily up and down changes in the closing values of the DJIA and a reduction of the Mean Average Percentage Error (MAPE) by more than 6%.

Read more here. 

"Yesterday we installed a billboard that uses Twitter to monitor and display the world’s mood in real-time. When the mood starts to dip, we use Twitter to give away pudding until it comes back up.

Apparently the world’s a bit down this morning, but you get the idea. It’s at the corner of West Broadway and Grand if you’d like to see it for yourself. And if you’re not in NY, there’s a web version at http://www.jellopuddingface.com

Hope you like it."

 

The White House Blog

Starting tomorrow, White House Administration Officials will hold "Office Hours" on our social networks to answer your questions about the President’s speech and the ongoing deficit debate. Brian Deese, Deputy Director of the National Economic Council and Special Assistant to the President, will be answering your questions on Twitter tomorrow at 5:00 p.m. EDT. Ask your questions with the hashtag #WHChat and stay tuned for opportunities to engage throughout week.

CARACAS, Venezuela – Call him Tweeter-in-Chief.

Hugo Chávez is using Twitter as a tool to govern Venezuela while he undergoes cancer treatment in Cuba.

In more than 40 messages this week on his "Chávezcandanga" account, he has approved money for a Caracas trash collection project, praised plans for a new park and cheered on the national soccer team.

Chávez hasn't mentioned anything about his chemotherapy but has alluded to his personal battle time and again, as he did in one tweet to a supporter on Tuesday: "We're moving along here, brother! With God and the Virgin!"
Chávez boasts more than 1.8 million followers, and his messages also regularly pop up on the screen on state television in Venezuela.

A leader who knows well how to choose his sound bites, Chávez has used Twitter to remain in the news at home even as he is out-of-pocket and not making his usual appearances on television.

He did just that Thursday morning in a flurry of messages when he complained about a referee's call during Venezuela's soccer match against Paraguay at the Copa America tournament in Argentina. Chávez said he had been watching alongside Fidel Castro, and they both agreed it was a bad call.

"In my modest opinion... THEY ROBBED US OF THE VICTORY GOAL! And I hope that with this I'm not offending anybody!" one of the messages said.

In messages earlier in the week, Chávez greeted Cabinet ministers and touted a public housing construction program. He said he had approved the equivalent of more than $25 million for a new trash-collection company in Caracas, $51 million for a state government and $37 million for the organization Frente Francisco de Miranda, which promotes efforts to transform Venezuela into a socialist state.

Turning to international affairs, Chávez directed a message to Mexican leader Felipe Calderón, saying: "Hey President Calderón, my friend, I thank you for your good wishes."

The 56-year-old Chávez underwent surgery in Cuba on June 20 to remove a cancerous tumor. He hasn't said what type of cancer has been diagnosed or specified where exactly it was located, saying only that it was in his pelvic region. He says chemotherapy is necessary to ensure cancer cells don't reappear.

On Twitter, his only references to his treatment have been vague and filled with optimistic slogans.

As he signed off one night, the message read: "From here, closing another day of this Battle for Life."