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Uncategorized Thursday, August 30th 2012 at 3:30 pm

Reddit Had 200,000 Concurrent Visitors During President Obama’s AMA

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You might have heard that the President of the United States, Barack Obama, made an appearance over on reddit for an AMA (ask me anything) thread. For half an hour yesterday, between 4:30PM and 5:00PM Eastern time, President Obama answered questions asked of him in a generally responsive and gracious manner. In addition to responding, he also managed to draw 200,000 concurrent users to the site — massively overwhelming it at times.

That number, of course, includes the people that were surfing happily along in /r/boardgames whilst completely ignoring any of the other subreddits. It’s not like the entirety of that surge came from the President deigning to join in with the Internet hive of activity that is reddit. A large portion of that traffic can certainly be placed squarely on his shoulders, though. Who wouldn’t want to ask the President about the recipe for the White House’s beer?

The reality of the situation is that the current social media climate is ripe for political campaigns to exploit. Even though he answered a mere fraction of the questions asked, for a grand total of 10 questions, merely showing up and taking the endeavor seriously has already won the President a great deal of karma.

The real winner here is the entire reddit team. Landing this much traffic over a single thread, even if it was the President, only further solidifies the site as “the front page of the Internet.” Plus, President Obama even mentioned his own meme in his last remark. Top that, rest of the Internet.

(reddit via The Verge)

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  • Anonymous

    So many visitors were scrambling to read talking points you heard everywhere else. He didn’t say anything new that he hasn’t before. This “I’m the cool pres” is starting to wear out its welcome.

  • josh w

    Thank you for taking the time to post your opinion. While I don’t personally feel that way and think it was pretty neat that he stopped in even if only for 30 minutes, it is nice to see someone getting worked up over politics.

    By the way, as a society & media, we don’t usually get upset when presidential candidates say something they’ve said before. It’s when they change their talking points that the media and the voting base that they’re talking to gets upset.

  • Noob

    I think in this day and age, we need someone who can keep up with social media and dispite his high status, let himself become “one of us”. While I agree the “cool pres” thing does sound tacky, the other candidates do not look appealing, particularly Mitt Romney…

  • Dr. Coene

    Repeal the Patriot Act.

    Repeal the NDAA.

    Restore the power to wage war back to Congress.

  • Jack Bond

    I’m not surprised he did this. Obama’s constituency is the children (Now young adults) whose parents taught them nothing and were left to blindly feel their way around politics. And I use the word “feel” intentionally. Without any logical direction, people tend to make decisions based on their feelings. Without any exercise of logic, these people fail to grasp the consequences of their decisions, and ultimately ruin freedom for an entire country.

    Luckily, however, people will recognize that they can’t afford children, and the population will shift to a majority of older, more mature adults who have finally figured out the way the world works. Then perhaps the country will learn the error of its ways.

  • josh w

    While on the surface that sounds quite nice, I think more people admire the President as royalty than common man. JFK was a prince, FDR and Lincoln were kingly. The common man president that comes to mind was Andrew Jackson, and he was a friggin’ nightmare, which was part of his charm.