6 ms·

Reddit: Obama visit generates most activity ever

52 points by gregpurtell 14y ago

ramblerman 14y ago
By the general reaction on reddit I would imagine this was an extremely successful PR move. From an objective standpoint however it was exactly that: PR. No real answers or interesting points were raised anywhere within the thread. In fact the most interesting questions (for me) were sidestepped like: - stance on drug legislation - SOPA and copyright laws - Assange persecution (bradley manning) The most disappointing thing for me personally though was to see how effective it was. I'm not American, but a lot of reddit was literally walking on air for days after the event singing his praises. Nothing new was said though, he was just ... present. That being said I would probably vote for him myself, given the alternatives.
- s_henry_paulson 14y ago
  How are you gauging it as "successful"? There's plenty of backlash in tons of the subreddits for exactly what you point out. There was a recent bestof post that attempted to paint the picture that at least one of the answered questions was planted there deliberately. Then there were multiple negative articles about the whole thing in Forbes, Business Insider, and other publications. It definitely generated a lot of PR (good and bad), but I don't see a clear notion that this was "effective".
  - ErrantX 14y ago
    I agree. On the other hand; the frickin president of the USA did an AMA on Reddit. He might only be feeding his policy lines, but that's a major part of his public job anyway - especially in election year. This time it might not have managed to corner him on difficult/key issues. But it's good to start somewhere; and this has to be one of the most accessible moments for the president ever. Maybe next time it will be a longer QA - or his opponents feel they have to respond with similar sessions. All of this can only be good; exposing him to you and you to him. I wish the politicians here (UK) would do the same.
logn 14y ago
Maybe I'm missing some replies but I would have liked to have seen discussion of IP laws and the drug war. For actual thread see: http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/z1c9z/i_am_barack_obama_president_of_the_united_states/ http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/z1c9z/i_am_barack_obam...
simonsarris 14y ago
It's a shame that it was seemingly(?)[1] a mere PR move and not very well thought out, or else intentionally much too whimsical. A much better format, if we really wanted to ask the president anything, would have been a two-stage AMA where Day 1 solicits questions, and Day 2 a new thread is made that replies to the top X most upvoted questions, and the comments for the second thread become a discussion of the answers. Many video AMAs work that way, and when the answerer doesn't want to spend all day in the thread I think it usually lets them answer less fanciful/quickly posted questions and more the questions that the community actually wants answered. Since Obama only allocated 30 minutes to answering, it definitely would have been a better choice. [1] It seems that one(?) of the questions might have been staged, as this user created their account on the day and asked the question very, very quickly into the thread: http://www.reddit.com/user/hmlee http://www.reddit.com/user/hmlee
- GuiA 14y ago
  Fully agree with you. I think the concept of AMAs is fantastic and a great example of how technology can be used to bring people closer to public figures (whether they are scientists, politicians, artists, etc.). Sadly, I think that Reddit as a platform leaves much to be desired here. Twitter fills that role in some way; Tumblr also allows a blog's audience to ask questions anonymously to the blogger, with the ones being answered autopublished. None of these approaches offer a fully satisfying solution though. It'd be great to see something that goes fully with the AMA spirit. Surprised Conde-Nast isn't banking more on it... and would be great if someone picked up that challenge :)
- shardling 14y ago
  Hmlee already explained what happened -- they were on a friends computer at the time, and it was easier to make a new account than to remember their login info. They wrote up the question quickly in an editor, so that they could use spell check. Then, make account, paste the text, hit submit. http://www.theverge.com/2012/8/31/3282911/reddit-obama-ama-plant-hmlee http://www.theverge.com/2012/8/31/3282911/reddit-obama-ama-p...
- rayiner 14y ago
  The drama about hmlee's post was completely non-sensical, resulting from a redditor's overestimation of the status of DOJ interns in the overall pecking order. It was the reddit hive-mind overreacting at its finest. There is of course little that reddit likes more than a conspiracy theory. In reality, the poster in question was a recent law school graduate (and classmate of mine) who interned at the DOJ, just like hundreds of law students each year. Her story was a common one even at top law schools: "took out a ton of debt and am still looking for work" and the question wasn't softball at all given what an explosive issue student debt is for people in the 18-25 demographic.
error54 14y ago
I think the fact that the admins kept the site running (albeit slowly) while getting hit with an unprecedented amount of traffic is pretty darn impressive. On another note, I can't wait to see other politicians try an AMA. I have a feeling that they're just going to see it as another PR stunt and won't be prepared for the (often) blunt line of questioning. It's important to remember that an AMA can turn out quite well (as in this case) or really hurt someones reputation (Woody Harrelson anyone?).
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
quicksilver03 14y ago
It would be interesting to know by how much Reddit's AWS bill increased compared to the previous month, to gauge the impact of the extra instances and the additional traffic.

52 points by gregpurtell 14y ago

By the general reaction on reddit I would imagine this was an extremely successful PR move. From an objective standpoint however it was exactly that: PR. No real answers or interesting points were raised anywhere within the thread. In fact the most interesting questions (for me) were sidestepped like: - stance on drug legislation - SOPA and copyright laws - Assange persecution (bradley manning) The most disappointing thing for me personally though was to see how effective it was. I'm not American, but a lot of reddit was literally walking on air for days after the event singing his praises. Nothing new was said though, he was just ... present. That being said I would probably vote for him myself, given the alternatives.

s_henry_paulson 14y ago
How are you gauging it as "successful"? There's plenty of backlash in tons of the subreddits for exactly what you point out. There was a recent bestof post that attempted to paint the picture that at least one of the answered questions was planted there deliberately. Then there were multiple negative articles about the whole thing in Forbes, Business Insider, and other publications. It definitely generated a lot of PR (good and bad), but I don't see a clear notion that this was "effective".
- ErrantX 14y ago
  I agree. On the other hand; the frickin president of the USA did an AMA on Reddit. He might only be feeding his policy lines, but that's a major part of his public job anyway - especially in election year. This time it might not have managed to corner him on difficult/key issues. But it's good to start somewhere; and this has to be one of the most accessible moments for the president ever. Maybe next time it will be a longer QA - or his opponents feel they have to respond with similar sessions. All of this can only be good; exposing him to you and you to him. I wish the politicians here (UK) would do the same.

logn 14y ago

Maybe I'm missing some replies but I would have liked to have seen discussion of IP laws and the drug war. For actual thread see: http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/z1c9z/i_am_barack_obama_president_of_the_united_states/ http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/z1c9z/i_am_barack_obam...

simonsarris 14y ago

It's a shame that it was seemingly(?)[1] a mere PR move and not very well thought out, or else intentionally much too whimsical. A much better format, if we really wanted to ask the president anything, would have been a two-stage AMA where Day 1 solicits questions, and Day 2 a new thread is made that replies to the top X most upvoted questions, and the comments for the second thread become a discussion of the answers. Many video AMAs work that way, and when the answerer doesn't want to spend all day in the thread I think it usually lets them answer less fanciful/quickly posted questions and more the questions that the community actually wants answered. Since Obama only allocated 30 minutes to answering, it definitely would have been a better choice. [1] It seems that one(?) of the questions might have been staged, as this user created their account on the day and asked the question very, very quickly into the thread: http://www.reddit.com/user/hmlee http://www.reddit.com/user/hmlee

GuiA 14y ago
Fully agree with you. I think the concept of AMAs is fantastic and a great example of how technology can be used to bring people closer to public figures (whether they are scientists, politicians, artists, etc.). Sadly, I think that Reddit as a platform leaves much to be desired here. Twitter fills that role in some way; Tumblr also allows a blog's audience to ask questions anonymously to the blogger, with the ones being answered autopublished. None of these approaches offer a fully satisfying solution though. It'd be great to see something that goes fully with the AMA spirit. Surprised Conde-Nast isn't banking more on it... and would be great if someone picked up that challenge :)
shardling 14y ago
Hmlee already explained what happened -- they were on a friends computer at the time, and it was easier to make a new account than to remember their login info. They wrote up the question quickly in an editor, so that they could use spell check. Then, make account, paste the text, hit submit. http://www.theverge.com/2012/8/31/3282911/reddit-obama-ama-plant-hmlee http://www.theverge.com/2012/8/31/3282911/reddit-obama-ama-p...
rayiner 14y ago
The drama about hmlee's post was completely non-sensical, resulting from a redditor's overestimation of the status of DOJ interns in the overall pecking order. It was the reddit hive-mind overreacting at its finest. There is of course little that reddit likes more than a conspiracy theory. In reality, the poster in question was a recent law school graduate (and classmate of mine) who interned at the DOJ, just like hundreds of law students each year. Her story was a common one even at top law schools: "took out a ton of debt and am still looking for work" and the question wasn't softball at all given what an explosive issue student debt is for people in the 18-25 demographic.

error54 14y ago

I think the fact that the admins kept the site running (albeit slowly) while getting hit with an unprecedented amount of traffic is pretty darn impressive. On another note, I can't wait to see other politicians try an AMA. I have a feeling that they're just going to see it as another PR stunt and won't be prepared for the (often) blunt line of questioning. It's important to remember that an AMA can turn out quite well (as in this case) or really hurt someones reputation (Woody Harrelson anyone?).

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

quicksilver03 14y ago

It would be interesting to know by how much Reddit's AWS bill increased compared to the previous month, to gauge the impact of the extra instances and the additional traffic.