Is Twitter the New Face of Diplomacy?
The world was shocked when it was released that North Korea joined Twitter. In a land where censorship is nothing out of the ordinary, joining a social network like Twitter seemed like an unlikely move. The official Twitter account, @uriminzok has a surprising 10,000 followers but it doesn’t follow a single other account. With quick help from Google Translate, the Twitter feed can be roughly translated to English but this provides little help in understanding many of the tweets. Why join a social network if one does not intend to be social?
Despite a lack of interaction via Twitter, US State Department Spokesman Phillip J. Crowley has made numerous attempts to create a dialog between the US and North Korea with pointed tweets and hashtags of #Korea. He has even gone so far as to specifically reference the country’s censorship on public communication saying, “The North Korean government has joined Twitter, but is it prepared to allow its citizens to be connected as well?” Crowley is referencing a known penchant for the North Korean government for censoring media. It is believed that despite the government’s involvement in social media, the people of the country are actually unable to view such content. This paradoxical situation seems quite unfair to most of the world.
Twitter is not the only social media outlet North Korea is engaging in. They are also found on Facebook and YouTube. Is this a new form of diplomacy or just a new way to fight back at accusations? North Korea has yet to respond directly to any tweets or posts, yet they continue to tweet and post their own content which includes making accusations and harsh comments towards both South Korea and the United States. Social media could be just a way to progress their political agenda instead of communicate with the outside world. Until a response is given however, why not continue trying to reach out using social media as the new form of diplomacy?
Social Media Reveals Political Tensions in Foreign Affairs
In the United States, we often take free speech and other First Amendment rights for granted. It seems as though every other day the news reports of other countries censoring the media, particularly social media. Although we have a right to express our opinion and share our thoughts, we must remind ourselves that we must do so without being disrespectful or rude. Just as we are entitled to our own beliefs, so is everyone else. This does not come without consequence. Relations between Israel and the Palestinians have been on shaky ground for what seems like forever. Thanks to Facebook and a careless photo post, that relationship and the true character of some people have been brought to light.
Monday the Israeli military, which prides itself on discipline and ethics, saw harsh criticism after a soldier posted a photo on her Facebook page smiling in front of bound and blindfolded Palestinian captives. Many see this photo as inappropriate given the joking nature portrayed in it as well as the already high tension between Israel and the Palestinians. Sadly, this is not the first time the Israeli military has had issues with social media. They had their five minutes of YouTube fame when one Israeli unit patrolling the West Bank broke out into choreographed dance on camera. Were they being disrespectful or were they just trying to pass the time? While the rest of the world sees the Israel-Palestinian conflict to be very serious, these incidents reveal how light some Israeli military personnel are viewing the situation. Making light of their patrols or showing joy at nabbing captives is not appropriate behavior given how long this conflict has been going on and how many lives have been lost to violence. The US military knows some of their pain. In 2003, military guards took similar snapshots of Iraqi detainees. When they surfaced, the guards were promptly removed and punished with jail time for prisoner abuse. It is a public outrage when these things occur. Military personnel are expected to behave accordingly when they are wearing the uniform; to carry out the values their uniforms stand for.
Even though we see Facebook, Twitter, and personal blogs as our own sites or outlets, too often we forget that they are still public, to some extent. Social media naturally is a public world of web connections. That does not mean we can be crass and disrespectful. Hateful comments, posts, pictures, or videos still receive scrutiny. Everyone has their own opinion but tact makes all of the difference.
Do you think there should be a social media code of ethics on posted content?
Is It Time to Set New Internet Regulations for Political Campaigns?
A California watchdog group has recently released a report calling for more uniform regulations for internet use of “new media” in political campaigns. This is aiming at social media particularly and if people are being paid to tweet or post on behalf of political candidates or their fundraising committees. The commission report also calls for California to update is legislation regarding campaigns and media use so that it includes the latest technologies and media platforms. Could this be the start of a trend? Perhaps all states should look at their campaign regulations and integrate new social media into them. With mid-term elections on the horizon, a surge in social media use by politicians is expected. With the rise in popularity, political candidates are using Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and many other social networks to interact with their audience and convey their campaign message. Although this is a natural evolution in campaign strategy, the same rules guiding traditional media messages should be applied. Social media is the new, more powerful, version of word-of-mouth which makes it more important to adhere to professional behavior guidelines when it comes to a campaign and more importantly, candidate opponents.
Using Social Media in a Slightly Different Way
Twitter, Facebook, and similar information sharing social media networks usually inform followers what someone is doing, what is new with them, or what is on their mind. However, former governor Rod Blagojevich are using social media to update followers on their corruption trial. This is a slightly different way to incorporate social media into one’s daily life. Talk about finding a new way to get the media on your side. Blagojevich’s corruption trial involving his activities while governor of Illinois began this week and Blagojevich tweeted that he was excited for the trial to begin. Blagojevich is charged with racketeering, bribery conspiracy, extortion, and wire fraud. Clearly, Blagojevich is using social media to his advantage. He has constantly affirmed that he did nothing wrong while he was in office and revealed his confidence again via Twitter saying, “The truth is on our side.”
Former Governor Rod Blagojevich
Often, media is restricted in high profile court proceedings. Here, Blagojevich is doing his part to share what is happening inside with everyone interested on the outside. This brings up a unique issue between those in the public eye and the public itself. I feel that frequently we here celebrities, politicians, and other high profile individuals complaining about a lack of privacy. They say they are never actually alone and that they don’t like what it has done to their daily lives. In this case, Blagojevich is inviting the public to be more involved in his life. Most politicians would prefer to keep events inside the court room strictly inside the court room, regardless of guilt or innocence. I find it intriguing that Blagojevich’s newest campaign is not for an election, but merely for support and he eliminates all barriers in his power to reach his audience. Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, and YouTube provide the means to share any information with social media users. This is both good and bad information; biased and unbiased. There is also a greater element of freedom which is also a risk. Politicians know this. Celebrities know this. That being said, is there really room for a private life when you put yourself in the public eye? It will be interesting to see if Blagojevich can win a victory of support through his information sharing as the trial goes on. Despite any public favor gained through his latest campaign, those inside the court will be the ones to decide regardless of how many tweets Blagojevich makes protesting his innocence.
Google’s New Edge on Political Campaigns
Google is raising in the bar in political campaigns and social media. Today Google launched new tools for political campaign candidates to better engage the audience. YouTube’s You Choose 2010 Campaign Toolkit and the Google Campaign Toolkit rolled out today to allow candidates convey their messages to more consumers in a more effective way. They are revolutionizing online campaign efforts and jumping on the social media in politics trend.
You Choose 2010
YouTube’s You Choose 2010 Campaign Toolkit utilizes YouTube’s ability to create different channels for video posts. It includes the YouTube politician channel that is a home base for the candidate. There is a Moderator on YouTube that provides a debating platform for voters to interact with others. There is also a YouTube Insight channel allowing the candidate to see how their videos are doing in popularity as well as reach. YouTube is also providing addition features for those wishing to pay for their campaign toolkit. 
Such features include special promotional powers based on search terms. Consumers can search specific key words and when doing so, you ad will display on the page. If a consumer clicks your ad, you are charged but the advantage is through knowing that the consumer is exposed to relevant information making them more likely to view your ad. The paid toolkit also features call-to-action overlays to drive donations as well as a television ad online option that allows your commercials to air on YouTube and its partners.
Google’s Campaign Toolkit complements YouTube’s toolkit but also adds in the all-encompassing features of Google. Candidates will be able to use Google’s extensive application portfolio to effectively manage their campaigns. Features include:
- Google Adwords to customize the campaign based on consumer searches
- Google Apps to integrate communication into a shareable format for those running the campaign
- Google Maps and Google Earth to help consumers find you
- Google News to stay up-to-date on current events
- Google Analytics to monitor campaign performance
- Insights for Search to learn who is searching and what the are searching for
- Google Web Elements to add your favorite Google products to the campaign website
- Google Moderator to provide a voter debate forum
- Google Alerts to monitor what is going on and to email important news alerts
Political campaigns have already been gaining speed on social media but now that campaign managers can easily integrate all of their social media and online efforts into one system, social media is sure to drastically increase its involvement in the political realm.
Well, that’s… different. – What Sheep and Youtube have to do with California politics
For this year’s Senate elections, the question isn’t if politicians will use social media, but how.
U.S. Senate candidate Carly Fiorna decided a video depicting her opponent as a wolf in sheep’s clothing who needed to be knocked off his pedestal (in the most literal way possible) would be part of her social media strategy. Some are calling it the “worst political ad ever,” but Fiorna’s happy with the bizarre ad’s results and promises “more to come.”
If your motto is “all publicity is good publicity,” then maybe demonic sheep campaigns are for you. This ad has certainly created a buzz, but not about the issues.
Here’s an article from the Wall Street Journal about the ad:
When U.S. Senate candidate Carly Fiorina released a video depicting a California Republican primary opponent as a demonic sheep, the near-universal response was: This is baaad.
“Is this the worst campaign ad ever made?” asked a writer from left-leaning Atlantic Monthly magazine. A blogger for the conservative National Review found the metaphors confusing, writing “I think Carly Fiorna just put out an ad in which she tells voters: ‘I am the real sheep in this race.’” Others just felt bad for the guy who had to play the sheep.
But a couple of political pundits say those who are lambasting the ad are missing the point. “The fact that you and I are talking about it means it’s not the worst ad of all time,” says Democratic consultant Kam Kuwata.
Kuwata knows a thing or two about Golden State politics, having help run Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s Senate campaigns. “The Fiorina campaign has to be ecstatic at the fact that Politico and the other blogs are saying it’s so bad, let me run it again for you,” he says.
Fiorina is one of three Republicans vying to unseat Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer in the November election.The three-and-a-half minute ad released this week portrays former Rep. Tom Campbell, the early frontrunner in the Republican Senate primary, as a pure, fiscally conservative sheep on a pedestal that keeps growing taller. The Fiorina campaign’s video knocks that sheep off that pedestal – literally – and calls him a “FCINO,” or a fiscal conservative in name only. The last part of the ad shows a person in a sheep costume and crawling away on all fours, the glowing red eyes in the mask suggesting Campbell would lead the flock astray.
The commercial has generated tons of free press for the Fiorina campaign. Besides going viral online – check this out on Twitter – many national and local TV stations have done segments on the ad. As if to prove Kuwata’s point, MSNBC showed a clip of the ad as Washington Wire was interviewing Kuwata.
“I’m a campaign operative, and I’m not an artist,” Kuwata said. “What I have to do is have people talk about things. I want people to remember it. If you walk away at the end of the week and think, ‘Hey, Tom Campbell is for tax increases,’ it doesn’t matter if I ran the greatest ad of all time or the worst ad of all time. It means that people are talking about it.”
Barbara O’Connor, director of the Institute for the Study of Politics and Media at California State University, Sacramento, said she personally found the ad “dumb” and far too long. But she said it was the first ad to get “cross-over” attention on both online social media sites and with the mainstream media. “That’s a new strategy in campaigning,” O’Connor says. “Whether the message itself is effective, the strategy is smart.”
The professor predicts that other campaigns will use the strategy. “You’re going to see more weird, bizarre and funny [campaign ads], because in persuasion theory, it’s an attention getter,” she says. You may not love it, but it does get your attention.”
For the record, Fiorina’s campaign says it’s thrilled about the response. “The whole intent behind it was to create something that’s different and controversial and would break through the clutter,” said spokeswoman Julie Soderlund.. Soderlund said the video was made by Fred Davis, who also made Sen. John McCain’s “Celebrity” ad during the 2008 presidential campaign as well as commercials for California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in 2006.
When asked if we can expect more ads in this vein, Soderlund promised with a laugh: “More to come! More to come!”
The Campbell campaign also had fun with the ad in an email blast to reporters Thursday. “Carly Fiorina’s campaign is in full Mutton Meltdown mode, with an increasingly bizarre fixation on farm animals,” said spokesman Jamie Fisfis. “She’s admitted missing a decade’s worth of opportunities to vote for budget reform, but instead of offering solutions, all she has for voters are dogs, cats and demon-sheep.”
The underdog in the Republican primary, state Assemblyman Chuck DeVore, went a step further by registering www.demonsheep.org. Poking fun at the clunky FCINO acronym, the site calls itself S.F.T.E.O.D.S.F.O.P.D., or the Society for the Eradication of Demon Sheep from our Political Discourse.
“Please pledge your efforts to stop these Jawa-like, Terminator-esque, Demon Sheep from taking over California,” it reads, before asking for donations to the DeVore campaign.
Obama answers your questions on YouTube
President Obama streamed live on YouTube today as he answered America’s questions following last week’s State of the Union address. Over 53,000 people voted for their favorite question out of over 11,500 user-submitted entries.
As November elections approach, we may see more politicians using social media to reach voters. YouTube creates a “town hall” virtual environment while allowing thousands of Americans access from the comfort of their computer chairs. Furthermore, voting on user-submitted questions ensures the topics Americans most care about are covered.
The following articles comes from BusinessWeek:
By Nicholas Johnston and Edwin Chen
Feb. 1 (Bloomberg) — President Barack Obama called getting health-care legislation passed soon his “greatest hope” as he took questions today via YouTube, one of the Internet forums that his political team has identified as essential for getting out the administration’s message.
Obama answered recorded questions submitted by the public on the Google Inc. site, the latest White House move to bypass traditional media outlets to reach audiences directly. The session was streamed live on the White House Web site and YouTube.
Questions, submitted during and after the president’s State of the Union address on Jan. 27, were posed on subjects including the economy, education, foreign affairs and energy policy. Obama’s answers largely reiterated his previously stated positions.
On his attempt to get health-care legislation through Congress, Obama said, “It is my greatest hope that we can get this done, not just a year from now, but soon.”
The questions submitted for the session were winnowed by online voting. As of this morning 53,340 users had voted for their favorite out of 11,694 questions. YouTube’s news and political director Steve Grove moderated the session using YouTube video clips.
Jobs and the economy were the top category of questions submitted, followed by national security and foreign policy, Grove said on the broadcast.
Tapping the Internet
The Obama administration has turned to online services like YouTube as well as social networks Facebook Inc. and Twitter Inc. to connect directly with voters. His campaign staff collected e-mail addresses to raise record amounts of money in the 2008 presidential race and used text messaging to get out vote.Republicans have been tapping those outlets as well. The party’s response to the president’s weekly address is posted to YouTube.
Today’s appearance by Obama reflects the proliferation of mass media “static” between a president and the public, forcing presidents to feel compelled to “experiment with multiple ways to of reaching Main Street,” said Stephen Hess, a scholar at the Brookings Institution, a Washington research organization.
Facebook Followers
Obama held a online town hall last year on health care and used Twitter to announce a news conference. Also, the White House has more than 400,000 followers on Facebook.On Jan. 25 the White House introduced an application for Apple Inc.’s iPhone that provides content from the official White House blog and links to pictures and news.
Administration officials have regularly taken to the Web site to answer questions in online video discussions. Domestic Policy Adviser Melody Barnes spoke online about education on Jan. 20 and Council of Economic Advisers Chairwoman Christina Romer discussed the economy on Jan. 16.
After he finished today, Obama said he wants to use the forum “on a more regular basis, because it gives me access to all the people out there with wonderful ideas.”
Obama and Politics 2.0: Documenting History in Real Time
In July of 2008, Nancy Scola wrote a really insightful post documenting a critical aspect of the Obama Social Media Campaign – Video. Enjoy!
I’m taking a crack at liveblogging an event tonight [ed. -- now last night] at NYU featuring Arun Chaudhary, director of video field production for the Obama campaign, in conversation with Ellen McGirt, senior writer at Fast Company and author of magazine’s April 2008 cover story “The Brand Called Obama.” Arun left his job as an adjunct film professor at NYU to produce video that pulls from public events, behind the scenes, and one-on-ones — unique creative content that populates BarackObama.com and a YouTube channel. Let’s get started.
Asked about the new media team, Arun describes at least 50 people crammed into one corner of an office building floor with with “pictures of JFK and graph paper tacked up on the wall.” Arun says the new media team spends a fair amount of money, but they’re buying fishing poles rather than fish; the broadcast quality footage they capture, for example, can be used for advertising in addition to online video. Asked about past campaigns he tried working with, Arun says they saw media as “too precious” to take creative risks with.
Arun explains his hire by the campaign by saying ‘you can learn the politics. You can learn how to navigate these worlds. But you can’t really learn the trades very quickly.’ The campaign has been attracting successful people that way, he says, naming Facebook’s Chris Hughes, who came on to handle social-networking. Arun then screens a well-crafted mock movie trailer calling people to a rally in New York’s Washington Square Park that features Obama in slightly goofy situations. Ellen: “We’ve never seen anything like this before”:
Ellen asks if the technology was in place three years ago to make video like this. “The technology was there three years ago, but I don’t think the right audience was,” says Arun. Back then, he jokes, there were just six hundred of the same people commenting on political blogs and that’s it; online participation today spans a wider segment of the population.* Ellen ask how he managed to get approval for the trailer video from the campaign and the candidate. Arun laughs a bit nervously, “I don’t know if the candidate saw it,” but says that it made its way, he believes, to the level of campaign manager.
The next video was crafted to call people to the pre-Jefferson-Jackson dinner in Iowa, as, Arun says, showing organizational strength was the key to getting attention and momentum in that state. Ellen asks if there was a concern that Obama and guest attendee John Legend were the only African-Americans seen in the clip. Arun pointed to the Internet Archive’s Prelinger Archives as the source of the overly white footage. (At the actual event, the video team had five cameras and five videographers in place capturing footage.):
Next video. An Iowa call-to-caucus piece, says Arun, is a campaign classic. It both asks Iowans to caucus for their particular candidate and educates voters on how to actually go through the confusing caucusing process. Both the Obama campaign and the Edwards campaign went the route of a dated instructional-style video, he says. (Arun praises the Hillary Clinton campaign’s call-to-caucus video which featured Bill Clinton eating a cheeseburger and saying something along the lines of “exercising is hard, but caucusing is easy.”):
It was the campaign’s “traditional media” team, says Arun, that whipped together a quick response to the Clinton campaign’s 3 a.m. phone call ad. But the new media team tracked down the young girl in the stock footage, Casey Knowles, an Obama precinct captain in Washington State. In the one-minute video, Casey deconstructs the techniques in the Clinton ad — the blue tint to the footage, the “scratchy voice” — and slams the “politics of fear.” An ad like that, says Arun, would never make on air, but works well online:
The candidate was in Terre Haute, Arun says, when the news broke that Obama had earlier made remarks in California concerning “bitter” Americans. Obama inserted a response to the incident in his Indiana speech. The new media team, says Arun, edited, packaged, and released the candidate’s own words within 19 minutes of the speech’s delivery. A lesson learned, says Arun, is that people are actually interested in the “sound blast,” and will watch long clips in their entirety:
He also cites Obama’s speech at their Chicago headquarters.The 14 minute clip shows the candidate addressing his staff, both in person and through a conference call (which creates a few minutes of less-than-thrilling footage when the call goes dead and Obama has to stall while it’s reconnected). It wasn’t deliberately shot low-fi for an extra dose of authenticity, Arun says, as some people suggested. There was no intention to create some sort of “Tanner 88″ moment. It was just, he says, that there was an intern manning the camera:
Asked by Emily about what an Obama administration might bring, Arun says that the role of video in an administration would be even more powerful than in a campaign. He mentions the broadcasting of health care meetings — creating a broader base of people who are able to keep an eye on the proceedings. The idea, Arun says, is not ‘telling people who tell people to tell people,’ but to use video to tell people directly. The role of video in governing, he says, is to achieve the goal of “cutting out the middleman.”
Q&A
Question: There’s a discontinuity in your work with high video quality and no sound mixing. Why?
Arun: We shoot as high quality as we can because it might be used for broadcast, but get used to it — a lot of the networks are going so broke that they’re getting rid of their “sound guys.”Question: What role with user-generated content play in presidential campaigns?
Arun: Using voter-generated content while probably remain “an unrealized ideal.” Much of the content that gets sent to them is “a little strange.”
Question: Why is new media going to make young people come out and vote?
Arun: It isn’t. Barack Obama is what is going to make people come out and vote.
Question: If you embrace an interactive politics 2.0, how do you avoid politicizing governing?
Arun: I think we’re ready for 1.5. We’ll [ed. -- a clarification: "we" here is a reference to political campaigns in general, and to the tools that might come into common use -- not a reference to the Obama campaign in particular] have virtual townhalls, for sure.
* Updated to correct: The original line referenced political blogs; in making the joke, Arun was referencing hard-core blog commenters.
Web 2.0 gives birth to Politics 2.0
Here is a great post on the evolution of Politics 2.0 By Drew Clark
When it comes to adapting information technology, Washington is always about two years behind the rest of the country. So it makes sense that, finally, Web 2.0 is catching hold and gathering momentum here, in early 2007.
Washington’s political operative and consulting class has been energized by the early start to the 2008 election. And no one is ignoring the Web this campaign cycle. Call it Politics 2.0, and watch how it changes the media power balance when it comes to political discourse.
Consider YouTube’s YouChoose ’08, which last month launched its online channels for presidential candidates – and has 13 of them in a fortnight. Yahoo’s presidential election site is attempting to build community around Flickr photo-shoots of candidates on the stump. MySpace is likely to start a presidential space of its own.
Sure, every major candidate has paid lip service to glories of the Internet since 1996. Bill Clinton invoked the “information super-highway” and connecting classrooms to the Internet. Bob Dole clumsily mangled his campaign’s Web address during a presidential debate.
That was all window-dressing. Their teams – and their successors’ teams’ in 2000 and 2004 – mostly hired a few geeks to play politics on computers. The real campaigning went on in the broadcast television networks and in the pages of The New York Times and Washington Post.
That’s about to change. There is an energy about electoral politics and the Internet that is different this time around. Almost all of it has to do with maturation of software and social networking models that could upset the pre-ordained dance between candidates, media and voters. Already, we’ve seen John Edwards make YouTube a big part of his campaign, with others close behind.
To put it in other words, can Web 2.0 in 2008 truly displace the “MSM” as the premier medium of political discourse? Can the blogosphere bring down the mass-market media stage?
It could. Or at least it might. So says Joe Trippi, former campaign manager to Howard Dean. Sure, Dean lost. But Chuck DeFeo, who was eCampaign Manager for Bush-Cheney ’04, agrees completely with Trippi’s analysis. Now he’s trying to harness conservative backlashers – the people who do “not believe that Dan Rather was reflecting” their views – to congregate at Salem Communications’ Townhall.com.
Trippi and DeFeo were only two of the geek-politicos that gathered last week for Politics Online, the annual conference of the Institute for Politics, Democracy and the Internet at George Washington University. Optimism about the Politics 2.0 was high.
Even NYU Journalism Professor Jay Rosen, who predicted that candidates would use Web 2.0 technologies as a “symbolic gesture” but “keep things exactly the same,” was bullish on blogs and wikis. They would do for citizen journalism what his previous calling – promoting “public journalism” in an (unsuccessful) effort to get the press to focus on election issues, and not the horse race – could never do.
Also represented at the conference were the creators of innovative sites like TechPresident and PresVid.com, or “the YouTube Campaign.” Online strategies herald new voter engagement that will “make politicians more accountable, creating a virtuous circle where elected officials who are… less top-down are rewarded with greater voter trust and support,” wrote TechPresident creators Andrew Rasiej and Micah Sifry.
But if Politics 2.0 benefits smart politicians and engaged voters, who loses from this new turn of affairs? The mainstream media!
Indeed, the most entertaining part of Politics Online came from a panel that pitted bloggers versus MSM: Rosen and Jeff Jarvis of Buzzmachine.com and PresVid against Jim Brady, executive editor of the washingtonpost.com, and David Plotz, deputy editor of Slate (now owned by the Washington Post).
Plotz said that Web traffic shows that horse race is what readers want – and don’t “want to eat their vegetables.”
“Journalists are convinced that no one wants ‘issues’ stories,” countered Rosen. “I don’t think that is going to change. The wild card is all the people excluded by the earlier process and all the things they can bring.”
If there’s a king-maker in Politics 2.0, it won’t be the likes of The New York Times or the CBS evening news.
By there may still be an opening. Consider an off-handed comment at the conference by Eliott Schrage, vice president of global communications for Google: “We have reached out to all the candidates and invited them to come to Google, to talk technology and policy, and maybe even grab lunch. And we are going to put those videos up if we can, and if the candidates permit us, on our web sites as well.”
Is it possible that the most consequential media pilgrimage a candidate makes in the 2008 election will be to Google’s headquarters in Mountain View, rather than to the mid-town Manhattan news rooms of The Times or the CBS Evening News?
Russian President Launches YouTube Channel
Barack Obama has it, Nicolas Sarkozy has it, Pope Benedict XVI has it, and now Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has one: his very own YouTube channel.
The channel is located over at www.youtube.com/kremlin, and its main purpose is to reach out to youth. Medvedev covers a wide array of topics: the first video on the site addresses schoolchildren and talks about good neighborly ties, while in the latest Medvedev talks about the Second World War and its outcome.
Interestingly enough, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin does not yet have his YouTube (
) channel, although he makes up for it by regularly appearing on Russian television.
Social Media Solutions prides itself on being a “hands on” social media agency. Our team has not only a strong educational background in business development, but also has a multitude of real-world experience in designing successful strategic initiatives for global corporations and small businesses alike. Our staff will partner with your company to ensure the development & implementation of the best social media strategy possible. 
