Got that? The President went to China, was asked about Twitter and it was streamed live on his Facebook page. How the world has changed.

He's never used Twitter! Shocking, given that his account with 2.6 million followers has even been "verified" by Twitter headquarters! (Update: As a reader points out in comments below, the Twitter website says that verification is given to accounts representing organizations and public figures, but doesn't verify who's actually Tweeting the Twittle.)

Twitter is Important

Meanwhile, is this not a changed international communication landscape? In these frictionless self-publishing tools, with real-time worldwide message delivery and network effects in listening, distribution and learning - there is something so powerful that it's a matter of international diplomacy.

Whitehouse Press Secretary Robert Gibbs scoffed at Twitter this summer and told CNN the site was blocked on Whitehouse computers, something that subsequent reports apparently disproved but interesting none the less.

It's no laughing matter, though. The impact of Twitter-like services really is like, in type if clearly not intensity, the changes the world saw with the advent of the telephone and the railroad. CNN and live cable coverage of Tiananmen square, Twittering (or not) from China: these fit into the same category of disruptive tools for international communication.

Maybe you should try it sometime, Mr. Obama. And while you're at it, you should ask someone to brief you on the movement for distributed social networking standards. A speaking gig in China would have been a great opportunity to sing the praises of decentralized, standards-based, interoperable, free-market competition in communication technologies. That's the next part of the Twitter story.

If you'd like to join the ReadWriteWeb team in discussing matters of global importance (or not) on Twitter, you can find us here.

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.

The quiz asks a number of questions including, "Have you or others in your family been seriously ill?" and "Do you think premiums are rising too fast?" From here, the application creates a personalized statement of benefits and users can choose to publish these statements to their Facebook wall. For the most part, this is a well built outreach tool. However, the quiz could be more informative if the "Read the Plan" link actually linked to passages relevant to each user's quiz results. This would ensure that netizens understood the actual plan rather than the messaged benefit statements.

The Obama administration has always had a strong Facebook presence. An average of 4000 status updates per minute were being broadcast alongside a live Facebook video feed during the inauguration. The first White House Live Facebook App was simply a continuation of that service. The quiz app is the group's first issues-based application.

In addition to the Facebook applications and activities, the Reality Check Health Care Reform campaign also posts regular updates to the White House Twitter feed, MySpace page and YouTube channel. To take the quiz visit apps.facebook.com/healthreformquiz.

If you haven't been following the developments in this case closely, here is a quick recap: Firas Alkhateeb, a 20-year-old student in Chicago, created an image that showed President Obama wearing the makeup of the Joker from the last Batman movie. To do so, he used an image of Obama that appeared on the cover of Time magazine on October 23, 2006. According to the LA Times, he uploaded this picture to Flickr on January 18, 2009. By August, someone added the word "socialism" underneath the picture, and it was widely circulated among political bloggers and also started to appear on posters at political rallies.

So far, so good. Even if you don't agree with the politics behind this picture, this is what the online mashup culture is all about. By the middle of August, however, Flickr received a DMCA take-down notice, claiming that the image infringed on somebody's copyright. Complying with the law, Flickr deleted the image from Alkhateeb's account. The problem, however, is that Flickr never shared who actually initiated the take-down notice.

Fake Take-Down Notices on Flickr: They Work

It is starting to become clear now that the take-down notice that Flickr and Alkhateeb received was completely bogus. According to Thomas Hawk, it didn't even feature the name of anyone who owned the copyright to any part of the image. PDN has verified that neither Time magazine, nor DC Comics, nor the photographer who took the Time magazine cover image filed this claim. These are the parties that could potentially claim that their copyright was violated by this image, even though, because this is a parody, their legal claims would be on shaky ground. Instead, the name on the document, according to Hawk, is "bogus."

To make matters worse, Flickr user 3e actually verified that Flickr really doesn't check the names on these notices. 3e just submitted a claim to take down one of his own pictures with a "once-off email address, using the name 'Joe Blow' and giving no identifying information other than an obviously fake address ("Anytown, USA")." Flickr happily obliged and 3e's photo was gone within hours.

If you don't like a picture on Flickr for any reason, you can just have it deleted by sending a DMCA take-down notice. We can only hope that Flickr will institute a better verification process in the near future.

As of now, Flickr doesn't even have the capability to restore an image after it has been deleted. YouTube, which probably has to deal with far more DMCA take-down notices every day than Flickr, at least offers users a recourse to have videos restored if the copyright claim can't be verified.

About the Photo

The posters that popped up across the country were based on Alkhateeb's photo, but had the TIME magazine logo and branding removed and had added the word "socialism" at the bottom. Alkhateeb wasn't responsible for these changes - a yet-to-be-identified person is behind the posters' creation.

In fact, you may be surprised to hear that the Obama/Joker image wasn't even meant to be political commentary, according to Alkhateeb. That's quite ironic given that it has now embroiled him in this intense political debate. Instead, says the college student, he was just messing around after discovering an online tutorial that explained how to "Jokerize" photographs using Adobe Photoshop. It seems that Alkhateeb doesn't particularly care about politics himself, having chosen to abstain from voting in November since he felt his state (Illinois) was already sewn up and decided before the polls opened. His views on Obama aren't particularly one-sided either. Alkhateeb favors the democratic viewpoint on foreign relations but tends to side with Republicans on domestic issues.

In a recent L.A. Times profile on Alkhateeb, it's reported that the photo generated over 20,000 page views during the time it was hosted on the photo-sharing website Flickr.com. However, as of last Friday, Flickr removed the photo from their site. Why? Alkhateeb says he received an email from the company stating it had to be taken down due to "copyright infringement concerns." (Apparently, TIME magazine wasn't too happy seeing their brand associated with this sort of political commentary.)

What About Free Speech?

But isn't this sort of political commentary, political parody in fact, protected as a form of free speech? Noted photographer and blogger Thomas Hawk thinks it is, citing a precedent for fair use (Folsom v Marsh) which states "if you produce something that is transformative, and not derivative, then it's fair use." Although Hawk isn't a lawyer, he may be right on this one. Says Corynne McSherry, a senior staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), a nonprofit that defends digital rights, Alkhateeb has a strong fair use defense if he was ever sued. "You really want to think twice about going after a political commenter," she noted.

This wouldn't be the first time Flickr got involved with political censorship. Hawk also blogged about how the site deleted the account of a user named Shepherd Johnson after he made critical comments about Obama in the Official White House Photostream back in June.

So is this yet another case of Flickr engaging in censorship? Or are they legitimately protecting themselves from these "copyright infringement" claims? (Flickr won't comment on this since a company policy prohibits them from discussing issues surrounding one particular user.)

What do you think about this issue? Share your thoughts in the comments.

The author of the memo, Peter P. Swire, who was also the attorney for the New Media team during the Obama-Biden transition, argues that the transition from a campaign to the White House is not just a transition to fewer staff members, but also a transition from having to scale from 10 million motivated supporters to 300 million Americans. While it would be great if the White House could respond to every comment on a blog individually, it would be hard to scale this with just a handful of people running whitehouse.gov (and, because this is Washington, there is already a White House Correspondence Office that is officially charged with answering letters and calls from citizens).

From Talking Points to Policy

In addition, responses now also have to be 'cleared,' that is, vetted by all the relevant agencies. As Swire points out, it was easy to ask a North Korea expert about what to say about a developing situation in North Korea during the campaign and to use that expert's opinion as a talking point, but now, White House bloggers don't just speak for the campaign, but for America, and a talking point could have real, potentially dangerous consequences. Now, the White House team has to get clearance to post about pretty much any topic.

Video

Swire also talks about the White House's extensive use of video. Thanks to using YouTube and other vendors, scale is not an obstacle for the New Media team, and thanks to the fact that these videos tend to be short, it is relatively easy to get clearance for these videos.

The Purple Folder

According to Swire, President Obama receives a purple folder every night, with 10 letters, faxes, or emails from the general public that are "broadly representative of the day's news and issues."  However, while it is nice that the President would read these letters, maybe it would also be nice if he read a couple of blog posts from representative political blogs every day as well (of course, we don't actually know that he doesn't do that already anyway).

It's All About Scale

The one recurring motif in this memo is that it is hard for the White House to scale its operation in order to really engage the public, and that politics obviously often get in the way. It obviously also doesn't help that the White House staff can't rely on the hundreds of volunteers that the Obama campaign was able to recruit at a moment's notice, as that would open up a whole other range of political issues.

Thanks to the Resource Shelf for pointing us to this memo.

It should be noted that while 'czar' might sound like an impressive title, in terms of the White House hierarchy, this new position will only be that of a "special assistant to the President," and whoever will fill this position will not have direct access to the President and have very little authority and even less authority over budgets.

According to Obama, not only do we depend on 'cyberspace' every single day ("cyberspace is real," he said), but, paradoxically, while the web empowers us to create great things, it also opens up a door to criminals. Cyber crime, according to Obama, costed about $8 billion in the last two years.

The focus of the announcement was squarely on ensuring privacy, preventing identity theft, and stopping hackers, but another emphasis of this new position would be to mediate between government and private industry initiatives, as well as ensuring communication about this topic between different government agencies. Protecting the "nation's information infrastructure" will be a priority for the White House.

As a side note, Obama also mentioned that hackers were able to hack the Obama campaign's systems last year.

What can Government Really Do?

There is something odd about hearing the government talk about this topic, though. While the Pentagon is obviously interested in this, not only to take out the networks of other countries, but also to prevent others from taking down its own networks, it just seems somewhat naive that a government initiative could do anything to prevent hackers from creating a botnet or breaking into government computers. While it is definitely a great idea to make sure that government agencies use the best possible methods to protect themselves, in the end, at least in the private space, what (besides more education) could a government do about users who don't run anti-virus software and don't patch their operating systems?

According to Hathaway's 60 second trailer, the key to a cyber secure future lies in cooperation between the public and private sector and a united effort on both a hyperlocal front as well as globally.

Melissa Hathaway came across our radar recently when President Obama tasked the former Bush administration aide with leading a 60-day review of Bush's Comprehensive National Cybersecurity Initiative; a largely classified, purported $30 billion, multi phase plan to address cybersecurity issues that Hathaway was involved in developing. The initiative was promptly dubbed 'a Manhattan Project to defend cyber networks' by the then Secretary of Homeland Security, Michael Chertoff.

The CNCI, which began as a directive from President Bush in January 2008, received much criticism and, in part, led to Obama attacking the Bush administration during his campaign for not efficiently addressing cyber threats. "As president, I'll make cyber security the top priority that it should be in the 21st century," Obama said during a speech in July.

Unfortunately, as pointed out by Siobhan Gorman in the Wall Street Journal, the decision to hold a 60-day review suggests that any big move in the field of national cybersecurity was once again put off. Or was it?

Who is to Blame for Internet Security Problems?

"Despite all of our efforts," Hathaway began, "our global digital infrastructure, based largely on the Internet is not secure enough or resilient enough for what we need today and what we need for the future."

She explained that the original design of the Internet was driven more by considerations of interoperability rather than security, and as a result we are now faced with almost insurmountable issues. Some examples include online criminals who steal our information, mass bandits who have the ability to damage portions of our internal infrastructure, and the recent ATM scam that law enforcement sources claim is one of the most frightening and well coordinated heists they'd ever seen. "In a single 30 minute period," Hathaway said, "138 ATMs in 49 cities around the world were illicitly emptied of their cash." This can't continue she explained, "Our goals depend on trust and that cannot be achieved if people believe they are vulnerable to these types of threats."

The Trailer for the Path to National CyberSecurity

We need an agreed way to move forward which involves shared responsibility, Hathaway noted, if we are to have "trustworthy, resilient, reliable" cyberspace.

Describing cyberspace and its security as "a fundamental responsibility of our government that transcends the jurisdiction of individual departments and agencies," Hathaway explained that although each government agency has a unique contribution to make, no single agency can see the overall picture and they'll need to work together.

Additionally, the private and the public sectors need to join forces as they are "intertwined" when it comes to cybersecurity. "While it is the role of the government to protect its citizens, it is the private sector that in the main designs and owns the majority of the digital infrastructure," she said.

Finally, Hathaway sees this as a unique opportunity for the United States to work with countries around the world, and with organizations on an extremely local level. "We cannot succeed if our government works in isolation," she added. It requires "leading from the top" from the White House, to government departments, to the private sector, the C-Suite, and even deeper, to the local classroom and library.

Hathaway said that her report, the culmination of a 60-day comprehensive review to assess U.S. cyberspace policies and structures, will be made public in the next few days after the administration has had a chance to review the data.

Last month, two Virginia congressmen recommended Chopra for the job, saying "Chopra's public and private experience in the technology field made him the right candidate," and pointed out his focus on healthcare IT "is ideal for a position that will have responsibilities dealing both with stimulus spending on healthcare and environmental programs."

"I have named Jeffrey Zients, a leading CEO, management consultant and entrepreneur, to serve as Deputy Director for Management of the Office of Management and Budget and as the first ever Chief Performance Officer. Jeffrey will work to streamline processes, cut costs, and find best practices throughout our government.

Aneesh Chopra, who is currently the Secretary of Technology for Governor Kaine of Virginia, has agreed to serve as America's Chief Technology Officer. In this role, Aneesh will promote technological innovation to help achieve our most urgent priorities - from creating jobs and reducing health care costs to keeping our nation secure.

Aneesh and Jeffrey will work closely with our Chief Information Officer, Vivek Kundra, who is responsible for setting technology policy across the government, and using technology to improve security, ensure transparency, and lower costs. The goal is to give all Americans a voice in their government and ensure that they know exactly how we're spending their money - and can hold us accountable for the results."

Tim O'Reilly, the man who coined the term Web 2.0, claims that Chopra has been instrumental in helping him better understand Government 2.0 and how technology can be utilized to build a better government. He offers eight reasons why Chopra is an excellent choice as Federal CTO.

We've embedded a video of the keynote Aneesh Chopra gave at this year's State of the Net Conference earlier this year to give you an insight into the thoughts of our new CTO. In this 50 minute talk, Chopra discusses health IT, broadband policy and open education among other things.

The quick way to submit a question is to use the widget you can find here. But there are plenty of other resources available if you are interested in learning more about the Summit of the Americas, starting with the America.gov Townhall page or the Howcast Townhall page. The America.gov site in this case links to the Howcast site, which pulls together all the links, how-to videos, and forum posts about this summit, with additional media on their branded YouTube page. The videos and other US State Department media are located on their own YouTube page, and finally there is not one but two professional sites covering Summit of the Americas activities in general.

We have covered how Obama's administration has harnessed YouTube in the past, and it looks like they are taking advantage of that channel again, linking to the Howcast Townhall site directly from the official White House blog. It definitely appears as if they are sincere about leveraging the technological infrastructure that is out there in order to drive engagement for events like these. With any luck, that is what is going to happen, as the issues discussed may lead to lasting decisions about how the democratic nations of the Americas combine to combat these global issues.

On the day the Presidency changed hands the White House made a blog post that included a promise that all non-emergency legislation would be posted online for five days before the President signed it into law so as to "allow the public to review and comment before the President signs it." That hasn't happened so far; Obama has signed 11 bills into law and only 1 spent 5 days online between Congress and his office. Now some observers say it doesn't matter and that it was a wrongheaded promise in the first place.

Harper summarized his findings as such:

Of the eleven bills President Obama has signed, only six have been posted on Whitehouse.gov. None have been posted for a full five days after presentment from Congress.

One bill, the DTV Delay Act, was posted after it was cleared for presentment by Congress February 4th, with the President signing it February 11th. This arguably satisfies the five-day promise, though presentment - a constitutional step in the legislative process - would be a better time to start the five-day clock. (Congress presented it February 9th.)

Several times the White House has posted a bill while it remains in Congress, attempting to satisfy the five-day rule. But this doesn't give the public an opportunity to review the final legislation - especially any last minute amendments. Versions of the children's health insurance legislation, the omnibus spending bill, and the omnibus public land management bill were linked to from Whitehouse.gov while making their ways through Congress, but not posted in final form.

Does This Matter?

The Sunlight Foundation's Paul Blumenthal points to a Google Groups discussion where Cato's Harper discusses his findings with prominent NYU Professor Clay Shirky and others.

Shirky argues there that posting legislation online for 5 days between Congress approving it and the President signing it is of very limited utility. He says in fact that transparency would be more appropriately applied to bills while they are in Congress, and the 5-day promise of posting before the President signs bills did more harm than good.

...the place the Founders decided to host most of the "system gaming" is in Congress, where factions are to be contained, to contend with the construction of legislation before it goes to the White House.

That's where legislative transparency might make a difference. I think the Obama promise was meant to model the appropriate attitude towards transparency, but I'm willing to bet that they've made implementing useful (read: legislative) transparency harder, because they've tried to demonstrate its efficacy in a place and manner that won't produce many good outcomes, and it will be hard to extrapolate from that to the idea that transparency will be good elsewhere in the system.

In response Harper writes that legislators would be much more cautious about throwing in last minute wasteful spending if they knew their work was going to sit out in the light of day for 5 days before it got signed. He also argues that it's important to hold the President to his campaign promises.

What do you think? Is it important that legislation be posted on the web for 5 days between when it's completed by Congress and when it's signed by the President? It's one thing to applaud Obama's use of the web and historic stance of transparency, but when it comes down to brass tacks - there are tactical decisions that need to be thought through. Presumably there are some things about using the web from the White House that the new administration is going to learn on the fly. Making a promise to take a particular step and not doing it at all doesn't seem good though, and arguments like Shirky's could have been foreseen before the promise was made.

In the past, we also chided the White House for seemingly giving preferential treatment to YouTube over other video streaming services, but it looks like privacy concerns were the main reason for this weekend's switch. Because Google uses long-term tracking cookies whenever somebody watches a video, the White House's web site was breaking the federal government's strict rules about using cookies on government sites - at least until the White House issued itself an exemption from these rules.

As Chris Soghoian notes, the timing of this move is somewhat odd, as YouTube just rolled out a new feature called delayed cookies, which lets those who embed a video decide if they want to allow Google to set a non-session cookie when others are watching the embedded video. However, it seems like this move came just a bit too late for the White House.

Of course, the White House will continue to post the video addresses on YouTube as well, but thanks to this new solution, the White House website will not set a cookie on your machine every time you play an embedded video anymore.

New Player

Even though YouTube is the de-facto standard for web video today, visitors to the White House web site won't have to miss out on most of YouTube's most compelling features. The new player allows for videos to be embedded or to be downloaded as an MP4 file. Videos can also be played back in full-screen mode and feature captions in English and Spanish. Interestingly, the player now also features a new link: 'also available here,' which currently points to the White House's page on Vimeo. While this is nice, it would also be nice if this link actually pointed to the wide range of services that the White House uploads the weekly address to. Another complaint we have is that the new embeds now automatically start playing whenever a page is opened, without the option to turn this off.

The presentation lists the following ways that Obama was "everywhere" in social media during his campaign:

• Obama has gained 5 million supporters in third party social networks.
• Obama maintained a profile in more than 15 online communities, including BlackPlanet, a MySpace for African Americans, and Eons, a Facebook for baby boomers.
• On Facebook, where about 3.2 million (during the campaign) signed up as his supporters, a group called Students for Barack Obama was created in July 2007.
• It was so effective at energizing college-age voters that senior aides made it an official part of the campaign the following spring.
• And Facebook users did vote: On Facebook's Election 2008 page, which listed an 800 number to call for voting problems, more than 5.4 million users clicked on an "I Voted" button to let their Facebook friends know that they made it to the polls.

Also check out these statistics from Obama's main website / social network, My.BarackObama.com:

• On MyBarackObama.com, Obama's own social network, 2 million profiles were created
• In addition, 200,000 offline events were planned
• About 400,000 blog posts were written
• And more than 35,000 volunteer groups were created - at least 1,000 of them on Feb. 10, 2007, the day Obama announced his candidacy

Here's the full presentation, with many more interesting facts and figures, via the wonderful SlideShare:

Case Study: The Barack Obama Strategy