At 3:08 p.m. yesterday afternoon, Barack Obama put this message on Twitter, “Hey, everyone: I’ll be taking your questions online today. Ask yours here:http://OFA.BO/gBof44 -bo,” then roughly an hour and a half later, there was the president, on the self-described “front page of the Internet,” answering your questions. Besides being the go-to site for up to the second links and comments about anything and everything, Reddit hosts a series called Ask Me Anything, or AMA, where interesting folks put themselves out there to, well, get asked any question the Internet can offer. Past AMAs have included celebs like Larry King and Woody Harelson to people like a dad who built his own telescope or a former stripper who just graduated from Harvard. The surge of interest in Obama’s AMA almost shut down the site.
Questions about space exploration, family life, and, no surprise, Internet freedom were among the 10 answered in Obama’s half hour visit. The Los Angeles Times writes:
More than 1.8 million readers subscribed to the thread, which also got more than 12,900 comments and questions.
During the session, Obama said his favorite basketball player was Michael Jordan, disclosed that theWhite House beer recipe will be unveiled soon and said “we are focused on a potential mission to a asteroid” when asked about the possibility of increasing NASA’s budget. A Reddit user quickly replied with a correction for the President.
“an asteroid, Mr. President,” the user said.
Obama’s reaction after his AMA: “NOT BAD!”
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