Politico reports that both the Romney and Obama campaigns have started using Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey's "magical" dongle, Square. Of course, you can't pay by saying your name as you now can at select merchants, but Square still makes campaign donations much faster and easier. Staff, field organizers and campaign volunteers hook up Square to their mobile phones and accept campaign donations on the spot.

Barack Obama has been leading the way on social media, giving the most interactive State of the Union address ever on Jan 24. It featured a Twitter hashtag and the entire speech was streamed on WhiteHouse.gov/SOTU. The White House also hosted a Google+ Hangout on Jan 30, which our own Jon Mitchell attended and blogged about. Sure, it might have been fun to hangout with the Prez, but unless you were one of the five Americans who actually hung out with him live, Mitchell reports, the experience felt just like television. Obama first launched as a Google+ brand, not a profile, late last year. Not long ago, the president joined Instagram.

Yes, it's pretty awesome that the Obama campaign is using Square, the oh-so-popular mobile photo app Instagram and the Google+ hangout feature. But we are at a point now where social media tools and mobile payments are hardly a novelty. Instead, they are accepted and necessary modes of communication. Will Square help raise more funds for Obama and Romney? Or is it just another payment option for the few?

This is the most user-friendly White House in history. It was a nice experiment in Web-enabled democracy. But despite the great camera angles and the believable-but-composed real-world folks, it stretched the definition of "social media" pretty thin. User-submitted content is good, and the hand-picked live participants get to be involved, but for most of us, it's no different from television.

The Hangout dynamics did offer some back-and-forth between participants and the president. The action didn't feel scripted. On the contrary, it felt like people talking over each other, just like a video chat usually does, except there was a moderator to occasionally interrupt and move things along.

But for most of the audience, it was a YouTube stream. The link was posted all over Google+ by various accounts, including the White House, YouTube and Google Politics & Elections, but the comments there were spammed-up and useless. It wasn't a social event except for the selected participants.

In that sense, it wasn't much different from the president's live event at Facebook last April. It was good publicity for a social Web platform, pro-Web PR for the White House, and a TV-like experience for the rest of America.

This was certainly a game-changing event. It was a demonstration of YouTube's looming succession to television as the most influential video platform. This was a triumph of a tech company over media companies. The production values were high, the program was engaging, and the content was timely. But for the public, it was no more of a paradigm shift than changing the TV channel.

Did you watch the White House Google+ Hangout? What did you think? Share your reactions in the comments.

As we saw last week with the blackouts associated with the Stop Online Piracy Act protests, the Internet has given common citizens of the United States an unprecedented ability to interact with the political process. This precedent is also evident in the social media battles being waged between candidates vying for the Republican presidential nomination. Tonight President Barack Obama will take that participation to a deeper level with the most connected State Of The Union Address ever.

The White House is making heavy use of YouTube. Last week it released a video showing Obama's senior advisor, David Plouffe, talking about all the ways that users can engage with the White House during and after the State Of The Union.

In addition to the Twitter hashtag, there will be a question and answer session with White House officials that citizens can participate in through the White House's official Facebook, Twitter and Google+ pages. Even social question and answer site Quora is getting in on the act. It has set up a special page to stream the State Of The Union.

The White House has also released a video showing the preparations being made for the writing and delivery of the State Of The Union.

The White House will also host a Google+ Hangout on Jan. 30 where citizens can ask the administration questions and get direct answers.

The push by the White House shows the ability of the Internet to breakdown communications barriers across classes, political systems and people. The U.S. populace has not been able to have this type of interaction with its political leaders since the days of community meetings at churches and town halls during the revolutionary period. Basically, once the government moved in to its home in Washington, D.C., the ability for the average U.S. citizen to engage directly with its political leaders while in office has been hindered. Obama and other politicians have been breaking down this barrier through the use of Internet-based communications and social media for the last several years.

It is refreshing to see the White House take these steps. It shows a degree of confidence in its message, a willingness to have an honest dialogue with citizens and a sneak-peak into the inner workings of how the most powerful organization in the world operates. A lot of credit goes to Obama for putting together the type of staff that understands how these tools work and can effectively reach citizens wherever they are on the Web.

In December 2011, I wrote in the ReadWriteWeb Predictions for 2012 that the presidential candidate with the best social media campaign would be the one to win the White House in November 2012. I also said that President Obama would likely be reelected. While social media is not the be all, end all factor in determining the results of elections, pundits will argue that it has greater weight now than it ever has. Candidates pay attention to what their Twitter followers are saying. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich even announced his candidacy via Twitter and gained more than a million followers in about an hour when he did so. Gingrich rode his strong Twitter following in South Carolina to a surprising primary victory in that state last Saturday.

To a certain extent, tonight's State Of The Union will be the biggest campaign stump speech that Obama will give all year, except for maybe the Democratic National Convention. Around the State of the Union speech, the President has built a robust social media campaign to give citizens a voice. This is how government should be run. Open. Transparent. Interactive. Go to where the people are as opposed to making them come to you.

Will you be watching the State Of The Union tonight? How to plan on participating? Let us know in the comments.

Top Image: Official White House Photo by Lawrence Jackson

They were given links to click on to learn more. Some of those links led to the White House Web site, where over a hundred thousand people signed petitions urging the President to veto any bill that would suborn Internet censorship. A few of those links led, to our own surprise, to ReadWriteWeb; and for a few hours yesterday, our traffic rose to unprecedented levels.

Whenever you divert a river through a narrow channel, the result is always raging and torrential. Google, Wikipedia, several blogs published through WordPress and Tumblr, and a few other sites yesterday successfully stuck a few logs in the river. They diverted people's attentions for a moment, and got quite a few of them to agree that changes in the Internet to divert traffic away from content (except for this one) are usually bad.

The result was a logjam of public support, a signal of concerted public opposition to government altering the mechanism of the Internet. Principal sponsors of the SOPA and PROTECT-IP (PIPA) legislation publicly withdrew their support of both bills in their respective houses. Now, despite new markup hearings scheduled for next month, it is extremely unlikely that anti-piracy legislation will emerge from Congress this term.

Victory, it would seem, for the SOPA and PIPA opponents. But we need to ask ourselves, do millions of Internet users truly know more today about the efforts to preserve the Internet and the industries that depend on it, than they did 48 hours ago? Or did Google and Wikipedia just present everyone with yet another popup (like the one with the green button and the red button where the green one says, "YES, I'M 18 OR OVER") and people click the one closest to the content they're really looking for.

But you can surely step in it once

You've often told us this yourself: We in the media are too full of ourselves; we think we're so clever. We can stick our foot in the river, and when it changes direction we proclaim ourselves God and say we, too, can change the course of mighty rivers. We're always trying to make ourselves "mainstream," and we scratch and claw for any means necessary to have Google make us "mainstream."

But we typically fail to keep track of where the river goes from here. Which makes the report this morning from Nikki Finke of Deadline Hollywood an ominous and foreboding indicator of future events for anyone preparing a "Mission: Accomplished" banner for the victory party. Finke cites an "anonymous" memo from an unnamed Hollywood studio executive (who, despite not being named, openly states he produced a TV series called "24") as making clear that Hollywood's campaign contributions are not guaranteed to anyone. After last Saturday's statement from the Obama Administration, the content industry may be rethinking its support for Democratic Party fundraising efforts in the near-term.

Hollywood, which is in California, the home state of Rep. Darrell Issa, who has become the loudest SOPA opponent in the House. California, with 55 electoral votes. The state where recent polls expressed a preference for that nice fellow who worked with Hollywood to help produce the Salt Lake City Olympics.

In the two decades-plus that I've covered anti-piracy legislation in the U.S., as well as other countries, I've provided the nasty details, the ironic twists, the points of conflict where the legal, creative, and technology worlds fail to connect. And in all of that time, I've been told by editors (when I've had editors), and even frequently by some readers, that folks like you simply don't care. I can still hear the words of one editor who hosted a media workshop resounding in my head: "The Internet is not about facts," he said. "It's about traffic. And you don't get traffic by publishing a bunch of facts, facts, facts, facts."

If anything is less about facts than that particular editor's view of the Internet, it's politics. You can't garner public support or opposition to an issue, I've been told, through a technical recitation of every use case. Instead, it's been suggested, to make an issue popular, you should boil it down to two words that fit on a protest sign. Case in point: Easily the most convincing explanation I've ever read about the potential effects of the anti-piracy system SOPA suggested comes from the blog of an ISP named SoftLayer. It's a detailed technical description of the mess that any DNS server would have to wade through if it were to be amended with instructions preventing it from resolving only certain domain name requests.

As an optimist, I'd think a reasonable person would come away from that blog post convinced that SOPA's suggested remedy was not viable. But you can't fit "DNS Pre-emption Would Break Name Resolution Cycles" on a campaign banner.

Insert cause here

You need something else. Up until 2009, the two-word slogan that anti-piracy opponents went with was "government conspiracy." (Which still made for a big protest sign.) Yet it did not resound with a broader audience, probably because none of the players in the alleged conspiracy had any direct relationship with you, the everyday user. It was all taking place in soundproofed, smoke-filled, underground bunkers, probably with Peter Sellers playing at least three roles.

What ended up working was something more like this: "Censorship bad."

And you know, it's true. Censorship bad. You don't want censorship? Of course not. Here's a nice popup for you. Click the button that says censorship bad. You can do it. Good boy.

Never mind that none of the bills are really about censorship. If they have the same effect, I've been told, it's the same thing. As you go forth about your business today, and as you take heart in the very probable fact that the Internet will not be ruined by an ill-considered bill from folks who didn't comprehend the technology, ask yourself this: How long will the Web maintain its integrity as a source of unfettered, unfiltered facts, facts, facts, facts as long as congresspeople, service providers, content providers, artists, publishers, journalists, political candidates, and you continue to let yourself be used as a tool for someone else's two-word-slogan, private interests?

The statement, which lists all three anti-piracy bills currently under discussion - the PROTECT-IP and OPEN bills in the Senate, and the SOPA bill in the House - is a loud warning shot indicating the President's lack of support, and likely veto, of any legislation that requires tampering with the structure of the Internet to enable enforcement.

Thanks for taking the time to sign this petition. Both your words and actions illustrate the importance of maintaining an open and democratic Internet.

Right now, Congress is debating a few pieces of legislation concerning the very real issue of online piracy, including the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), the PROTECT IP Act, and the Online Protection and Digital ENforcement Act (OPEN). We want to take this opportunity to tell you what the Administration will support--and what we will not support. Any effective legislation should reflect a wide range of stakeholders, including everyone from content creators to the engineers that build and maintain the infrastructure of the Internet.

While we believe that online piracy by foreign websites is a serious problem that requires a serious legislative response, we will not support legislation that reduces freedom of expression, increases cybersecurity risk, or undermines the dynamic, innovative global Internet.

Any effort to combat online piracy must guard against the risk of online censorship of lawful activity and must not inhibit innovation by our dynamic businesses large and small. Across the globe, the openness of the Internet is increasingly central to innovation in business, government, and society and it must be protected. To minimize this risk, new legislation must be narrowly targeted only at sites beyond the reach of current U.S. law, cover activity clearly prohibited under existing U.S. laws, and be effectively tailored, with strong due process and focused on criminal activity. Any provision covering Internet intermediaries such as online advertising networks, payment processors, or search engines must be transparent and designed to prevent overly broad private rights of action that could encourage unjustified litigation that could discourage startup businesses and innovative firms from growing.

We must avoid creating new cybersecurity risks or disrupting the underlying architecture of the Internet. Proposed laws must not tamper with the technical architecture of the Internet through manipulation of the Domain Name System (DNS), a foundation of Internet security. Our analysis of the DNS filtering provisions in some proposed legislation suggests that they pose a real risk to cybersecurity and yet leave contraband goods and services accessible online. We must avoid legislation that drives users to dangerous, unreliable DNS servers and puts next-generation security policies, such as the deployment of DNSSEC, at risk.

Let us be clear--online piracy is a real problem that harms the American economy, threatens jobs for significant numbers of middle class workers and hurts some of our nation's most creative and innovative companies and entrepreneurs. It harms everyone from struggling artists to production crews, and from startup social media companies to large movie studios. While we are strongly committed to the vigorous enforcement of intellectual property rights, existing tools are not strong enough to root out the worst online pirates beyond our borders. That is why the Administration calls on all sides to work together to pass sound legislation this year that provides prosecutors and rights holders new legal tools to combat online piracy originating beyond U.S. borders while staying true to the principles outlined above in this response. We should never let criminals hide behind a hollow embrace of legitimate American values.

This is not just a matter for legislation. We expect and encourage all private parties, including both content creators and Internet platform providers working together, to adopt voluntary measures and best practices to reduce online piracy.

So, rather than just look at how legislation can be stopped, ask yourself: Where do we go from here? Don't limit your opinion to what's the wrong thing to do, ask yourself what's right. Already, many members of Congress are asking for public input around the issue. We are paying close attention to those opportunities, as well as to public input to the Administration. The organizer of this petition and a random sample of the signers will be invited to a conference call to discuss this issue further with Administration officials and soon after that, we will host an online event to get more input and answer your questions. Details on that will follow in the coming days.

Washington needs to hear your best ideas about how to clamp down on rogue websites and other criminals who make money off the creative efforts of American artists and rights holders. We should all be committed to working with all interested constituencies to develop new legal tools to protect global intellectual property rights without jeopardizing the openness of the Internet. Our hope is that you will bring enthusiasm and know-how to this important challenge.

Moving forward, we will continue to work with Congress on a bipartisan basis on legislation that provides new tools needed in the global fight against piracy and counterfeiting, while vigorously defending an open Internet based on the values of free expression, privacy, security and innovation. Again, thank you for taking the time to participate in this important process. We hope you'll continue to be part of it.

The statement indicates outright support for the position put forth by the petitioners, and suggests it would be their recommendation to the President as well that anti-piracy legislation in its current form should be vetoed.

That President Obama himself has not made a statement is probably intended to help him preserve his official position as against online piracy. However, this recommendation will very likely be heeded, and this move may slow, if not halt, any legislative activity on this matter for the remainder of this term in the Senate. In the House, which remains under Republican control, the SOPA bill (minus the court order provision that constituted its main enforcement provision) may still be voted on, but the chances of it facing reconciliation with a Senate version of the same bill are now extremely minimal.

An imminent show of dissent from the Administration against current anti-piracy legislation would likely have been the trigger for Sen. Patrick Leahy's (D - Vt.) decision Thursday to remove the court order provision from his PROTECT-IP bill. That led to Rep. Lamar Smith's decision Friday to remove the corresponding provision from his SOPA bill.

The top industries on LinkedIn are higher education, marketing and advertising, information technology and health care. Of its 115 million members, almost 5 million are employed by small businesses. The biggest growth industries are renewables and environment, and oil and energy. The infographic also focuses on LinkedIn's use by veterans, as well as the number of users who have attended community college.

Do you use LinkedIn for networking? Share your experiences in the comments.

Exascale computing systems are said to be capable of 1,000 times the processing power of the fastest computer currently operational, the Chinese Tianhe-1A supercomputer.

Advanced computing has a DOE total budget about of $465 million, an increase of 21% over 2010.

Supercomputers are used to model complex systems. The higher-functioning the supercomputer the more accurate a model can be, whether of weather, war or global warming. Currently, supercomputer processing speeds are rendered in terms of a petaflop, one quadrillion floating point operations per second.

Exascale computing, which most experts believe will be achievable by 2021, will increase this a thousandfold.

The ability to compute in exabytes seems increasingly necessary as the amount of data available increases cataclysmically. Eight years ago there were only about five exabytes of data online. Two years ago, that amount of flowed over the Internet in a month. But recent estimates put the monthly Internet data flow at 21 exabytes.

The problem with reaching this milestone is not so much computing development as it is power requirements. According to supercomputing specialist Peter Kogge, the development of exascale is liable to hit a "power wall."

"(S)uccess in assembling such a machine will demand a coordinated cross-disciplinary effort carried out over a decade or more...to find the right combination of processing circuitry, memory structures, and communications conduits -- something that can beat what are normally voracious power requirements down to manageable levels."

To get more of big data on, download ReadWriteWeb's free report, "The Age of Exabytes: Tools & Approaches For Managing Big Data.

Argonne Blue photo by Argonne National Laboratory | other sources: HPCwire, Computerworld

But one of the more interesting changes for the new USA.gov is the launch of a mobile application store where already there are 18 apps available.

Most of the apps aren't new, except for the recalls app and those from the TSA, FBI and U.S. Embassy. But never before had the wide smattering been collected in one unified resource.

Progress? Or Disenfranchisement?

The end result of that collection may either represent a promising development that shows off how the government is embracing technology, or a disappointing example of the disorganized nature of big government when it comes to tasks such as, depending on your perspective.

On the one hand, some will say it's a measure of progress to see the government acknowledging the promise of the mobile Web. As Director of the Office of Management and Budget Peter R. Orszag explains, "In our daily lives, we use online and mobile media to do everything from banking to shopping, booking a trip, and taking a class. Yet, too often, when it comes to interacting with the federal government, it's as if time stood still... " He continues, saying that the new Mobile Apps Store can be used to "unlock useful government information and give it to people in a way that they can use it conveniently and quickly."

Orzag says most of the apps are compatible with iPhone, BlackBerry and Android devices.

However, on closer inspection, some apps are iPhone-only, others are in Android format plus mobile Web format, and others still are mobile Web apps only. It's a somewhat confusing lineup for a general population who needs a Mobile App FAQ such as this that explains what exactly an app even is. ("An app, short for "application," is a tool that helps you accomplish a task or find information," the FAQ reads.)

While it's good to see that there are native applications available for popular handset operating systems like Android and iPhone, it's disappointing that all the apps aren't offered in mobile Web format as well. That leaves out a large part of the mobile population whose phones have Internet access and are capable of browsing the Web but aren't listed among "top" phones like the Droid or iPhone.

Even more concerning is the statement that some of the mobile applications may cost a small fee. (The 18 currently listed are free, however).

There's an App for That! *But It's on the iPhone and You Have to Pay for It

The BetaNews website uncovered a spreadsheet hosted on USA.gov that lists 109 mobile applications and their cost, when applicable. A good handful appear to be in iPhone-only format with an associated fee.

Does this mean that the convenience of an easy-to-access mobile government is only available to those who can not only afford to buy the priciest smartphones, but also afford to purchase mobile applications? It appears so in several cases.

As a reader of a technology column such as this, you may fit that description and be pleased with this development. But as someone who's concerned about the U.S. mobile population as a whole, seeing the government create iPhone app after iPhone app may leave you feeling a bit uneasy. At the very least, there should be an accompanying mobile Web site for every native application listed... if there are native applications developed at all, that is.

The USA.gov mobile app store launch comes only days after it was revealed that the U.K. government spent thousands of pounds developing iPhone applications itself. Is the U.S. government about to make the same mistake?

For more thoughts on an apps-driven government, check out "White House CIO Vivek Kundra and His Beliefs About the Cloud"

First Lady Michelle Obama, a leading advocate for eliminating the problem of childhood obesity, launched the Apps for Healthy Kids challenge earlier this year on the ChallengePost platform. Her challenge offers "$60,000 in prizes to create innovative, fun and engaging software tools and games that encourage children directly or through their parents to make more nutritious food choices and be more physically active."

With this new government contract, ChallengePost will be the official platform on which challenges from government agencies like these are built. These open, crowd-sourced challenges are valuable because they inspire innovation and creativity focused around a specific problem in the public interest. Whether it's helping kids discover healthy eating habits, or creating apps that help the public better access government data, ChallengePost and the U.S. government will be hosting a number of challenges in the coming years.

"We're extremely excited to be working closely with the government, and to use challenges to help solve problems, generate ideas, and increase innovation," said ChallengePost CEO, Brandon Kessler.

Full government integration of the platform will begin in July as agencies will then be able to post problems and invite the public to vote, pledge money and judge solutions. It's great to see the government making strong attempts to offer a more open and transparent system to the public, and with ChallenePost's help we may soon be seeing some innovative applications that leverage government resources.

Now, since the Commander in Chief has admitted to not even being a Twitter user, we can also safely assume he's not big into Foursquare, either. But what if he were? What if he had the freedom to complain about bad restaurant service, gossip about his colleagues and get a hard-earned "Bender" badge just like the rest of us? Would the maps of his checkins look something like these, perhaps?

Perhaps one day, we'll be able to talk Obama (or one of his predecessors) into sharing the minutiae of his nightlife with the public. How do you think the Secret Service would feel about that?

Click the image below to see the full version, and let us know what you think in the comments.

The piece was inspired by the Foursquare-integrating BlackBook Guides (iTunes link), a set of cultural guides to major cities, featuring restaurants, nightlife, travel, fashion and entertainment.

Social Media monitoring and analytics service Sysomos analyzed over 100 million tweets from January 1 to 15. Overall, the company looked at topics in six different categories: people, locations, film, business, sports and miscellaneous entities.

Haiti, Obama and Avatar

In the early days of January, President Barack Obama was the most often mentioned person on Twitter, followed by Lady Gaga and Michael Jackson. Thanks to his inane comments about the disaster in Haiti, Pat Robertson came in at number four.

Unsurprisingly, the most talked about location on Twitter in early January was Haiti, followed by the United States, China, Texas and Canada.

YouTube, Facebook and Google were the most often discussed businesses on Twitter, followed by Microsoft and Yahoo. This list is clearly dominated by the usual suspects, including like AT&T, Netflix and Starbucks, though it also features Etsy and the Fox News Channel.

Avatar was the most talked about movie on Twitter in early January, followed by Sherlock Holmes and Start Wars. The Cincinnati Bengals were the most often discussed sports franchise.

2.4 Million Tweets About the iPad

Of course, we couldn't help but ask Sysomos about the iPad. According to the company's data, the iPad would be the number three item in the miscellaneous entities section - following iTunes and Microsoft's Xbox. Overall, Sysomos registered 2.4 million tweets that referenced Apple's latest creation.

The White House announced the release of a new White House iPhone app via a late-night blog post on WhiteHouse.gov. Included in the mobile application are features like news items, photos, blog posts, videos, and even live video streaming. That's right - live video. According to White House blogger Dave Cole, the app lets users watch public events like speeches and press briefings in real time using their mobile device. Next week's State of the Union address by President Obama will kick off this effort, delivering live video of the speech to anyone running the free application on their Apple iPhone or iPod Touch.

This downloadable mobile application (iTunes link) is the first of its kind to be released by the current administration... that is, unless you count the Obama campaign's iPhone application, which offered mobilized access to campaign news, media and events prior to the election. The Obama administration is notable for the way it's embraced technology, using everything from YouTube for weekly "fireside chats" to wikis for recruiting purposes. They even licensed the transition site Change.gov using Creative Commons, which allowed a company called Cerado the ability to translate the site into a Web-based iPhone application.

What's most interesting about this new mobile effort is the fact that the iPhone application was launched prior to the mobile-ready version of WhiteHouse.gov's website. While that effort is "coming soon," says the blog post, it won't be available in time for Obama's next presidential address, and there are no details as to whether or not it will offer any sort of video features, much less live streaming.

Of course it's important that the government's efforts aren't iPhone-only, but it's clear that the Apple platform is an important part of the administration's efforts to reach its constituents - especially the young, tech-savvy mobile users who some say helped Obama win the election.

Mobile Web's Explosive Growth

Also of interest: The White House states that mobile Web use has grown over 100% in the last year in the U.S., and higher worldwide. That's putting it mildly. Over the past year, we've heard from numerous companies and analyst firms regarding the explosive growth of the mobile web. For example, in spring of 2009, Opera reported a 157% increase in usage of their Opera Mini web browser and a 319% increase in year-over-year data traffic. AdMob released a report in October revealing a 19% increase year-over-year in iPhone/iPod Touch data traffic alone, and last month, analyst firm IDC predicted over a billion mobile web users by 2010. Ignoring the mobile masses at this point would be a mistake and it's clear that the White House understands that. Notes the blog post: "this is just the first step for WhiteHouse.gov's mobile platform."

Editor's note: This story is part of a series we call Redux, where we'll re-publish some of our best posts of 2009. As we look back at the year - and ahead to what next year holds - we think these are the stories that deserve a second glance. It's not just a best-of list, it's also a collection of posts that examine the fundamental issues that continue to shape the Web. We hope you enjoy reading them again and we look forward to bringing you more Web products and trends analysis in 2010. Happy holidays from Team ReadWriteWeb!

Specifically, Sysomos' Alex Cheng, Mark Evans and Nick Koudas were interested in examining who the most followed politicians on Twitter are and "how those within the political Twittersphere behave in terms of their follower/followed patterns." In order to do so, they created a list of 168 accounts of influential politicians, reporters and bloggers from the U.S., Canada, and the U.K. that comprise the core of the political Twittersphere.

Obviously, we can't really know if the fact that somebody follows somebody else actually means that they are reading all the updates and the political Twittersphere is arguably a bit larger than the sample that Sysomos looked at here. For this study, Sysomos only looked at accounts that had over 5,000 followers and the team acknowledges that it had to make some editorial choices to keep the study manageable. The fact that the map of all the connections between the 168 accounts weighs in at 16 MB shows the complexity of this study, so some editorial control was obviously necessary.

Here are some of the highlights from the report:

The President

With over 2.33 million followers, President Barack Obama is the most followed politician on Twitter, though he is only being followed by 56 members of the 168-member political Twittersphere. Among Obama's followers are Al Gore, Portland's Mayor Sam Adams, London's Mayor Boris Johnson and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown. Newt Gingrich also follows Obama's updates, as does blogger Marc Parent (@mparent77772)

There is probably a reason why relatively few political influencers follow Obama. After all, if you want updates from the president, his Twitter account is probably one of the worst ways of following him and most of the updates on Obama's account aren't very interesting. Other politicians like Schwarzenegger and John Boehner also update their accounts far more regularly.

Politicians and Political Reporters

Among politicians and reporters, ABC News' George Stephanopoulos follows 105 members of the 168-member political Twittersphere Sysomos analyzed, followed by the Newshour (104), followed by John Boehner (98), the Huffington Post (98), and Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger (92).

Within the political Twittersphere, Schwarzenegger is also the most followed politician and Stephanopoulos is the most followed media personality.

Daryl Cagle, the cartoonist for MSNBC.com, is the #1 media personality that other reporters follow on Twitter.

News Organizations

Besides looking at individual reporters, Sysomos also examined the larger news organizations in the US. CNN's Breaking News account (@cnnbrk) has over 2.75 million followers, followed by NPR Politics (@nprpolitics) with 1.51 million and Good Morning America (@gma) with 1.37 million. CNN doesn't really follow anybody back, though, while the NPR Politics account follows close to 117,000 Twitter users and Newsweek (@newsweek) follows 97,000.

The members of the political Twittersphere as identified by Sysomos that are most likely to be followed are the PBS Newshour account, the Huffington Post and the LA Times.

Although the nation has an acting cybersecurity coordinator in former FBI cyber staffer Chris Painter, no permanent appointee has been named in the six months since the President announced his commitment to create and fill this position. Can the White House appropriately and competently address our national needs without a permanent cybersecurity head? In light of our assessment of America's vulnerability to cyber attacks just six months ago, Reitinger's reaction is surprising.

"It is absolutely essential that there be strong, White House involvement in cybersecurity, and there is strong, White House involvement in cybersecurity," he said. He further vouched for the acting coordinator, saying, "The acting cybersecurity coordinator at the White House, Chris Painter, is a bona fide expert in this field, and has a great team of people working for him."

Still, although Reitinger says things are going well now and that short-term issues are being addressed, how much control does the acting coordinator have to over long-term, national IT concerns - especially considering the problematic and essentially political nature of cybersecurity leadership in Washington? Reitinger told Information Week several months ago that he expected the coordinator position to be a fulcrum for cybersecurity at the national level and within the White House. Have his priorities shifted enough that he feels a temporary position in one administration is truly adequate to address the country's needs?

And what of the President's assurance that national cybersecurity would be prioritized with this new position? We've been reporting since April on calls for the President to create a National Office of Cyberspace, and those requests from all corners - including congressional types and think tanks - have not satisfactorily been met.

To quote Information Security editor Michael Mimoso, "All I want for Christmas is a cybersecurity coordinator."

Is President Obama right to ease up on his commitment to national cybersecurity, and is America sufficiently protected by a temporary cybersecurity coordinator, after all? Or are the cyberwonks justified in their disappointment and frustration? Let us know your opinion in the comments.