The Office of Management and Budget deserves points for joining the Twitterverse in a staid and simple way Tuesday, appropriate for its role as the White House's business branch.
"Happy to be here," the OMB press office said, before directing readers to a fuller introduction on the agency's blog.
Directness is usually preferable to passionate intensity in the canon of first Tweets.
"Just met w/Cabinet re unacceptable violence against HS+college women," Vice President Joe Biden breathlessly Tweeted July 13 in his first personal post to his office's 11-day-old Twitter stream. "Tasked agencies to mobilize all assets to attack this problem."
The vice president's staff was left to follow up a while later.
"Yes, that was a direct tweet from VP Biden on an issue he cares very much about," a staffer explained. "Stay tuned for more, his tweets will always be signed '-VP.'"
OMB loses points, though, when it comes to that explanatory blog entry, which opens "We deal with a lot of big numbers in our daily work here at OMB, but now we will start focusing on a small one: 140."
Comparing the complexity and heft of your daily work to the brevity of a Tweet is as old as the social media site itself. And, unfortunately, the prize for most complex topic tackled by Tweet probably dates back to 2009.
Joseph Marks
Joseph Marks covers government technology issues, social media, Gov 2.0 and global Internet freedom for Nextgov. He previously reported on federal litigation and legal policy for Law360 and on local, state and regional issues for two Midwestern newspapers. He also interned for Congressional Quarterly’s Homeland Security section and the Associated Press’s Jerusalem Bureau. He holds a bachelor’s degree in English from the University of Wisconsin and a master’s in international affairs from Georgetown.
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