Obama to hold Facebook
town hall; kicks off
campaign fund raising in
Bay Area
By Mike Swift
mswift@mercurynews.com
Posted: 04/05/2011 03:20:55 PM PDTUpdated: 04/05/2011 06:50:00 PM PDT
Hoping to grab some high-tech luster and begin
filling the campaign warchest he'll need in 2012,
President Barack Obama will visit Facebook this
month for an online town hall event with CEO Mark
Zuckerberg before going to San Francisco for a
series of pricey fundraisers, including a $35,800 a
plate dinner hosted by Salesforce.com CEO Marc
Benioff.Obama, who announced Monday he would seek re-
election, is using the two-day visit to Silicon Valley
and San Francisco as an initial lap of the 2012
presidential campaign. He is expected to return to
the Bay Area multiple times before the election.
Facebook and the White House jointly announced
Tuesday that Obama will visit the Palo Alto
headquarters of the social network on April 20,
where the President will hold a special "Facebook
town hall" event that will stream live over Facebook
and the White House website, starting at 1:45 p.m.
Zuckerberg and Facebook chief operating officer
Sheryl Sandberg will moderate and sit onstage with
the President, in front of an audience of about 1,000
Facebook employees, small business leaders and
Silicon Valley entrepreneurs.
While the President is expected to take some
questions from the audience, the majority will be
selected from questions people post for
Obama on Facebook or the White House website
over the next two weeks.
Political insiders said the Bay Area offers the double
political advantage of being a fertile fundraising
area for Democrats, and as well as allowing
politicians to associate themselves with the world
changing technology of Silicon Valley.
Former President Bill Clinton "is really the one that
tilled this soil in Silicon Valley before anyone else,
and it proved to be very beneficial -- not only for
the dollars, but also with high technology in Silicon
Valley. That plays very well in Peoria and everywhere
else," said Santa Clara County Assessor Larry Stone,
a Democratic Party activist.
"Yes, the tech people have a lot of money," said
Barbara O'Connor, emeritus director of the Institute
for the Study of Politics and Media at California State
University, Sacramento, "but I think he's interested in
getting the message out to as many people as
possible, in an interactive format. That's important,
because you get to hear what people are thinking."
Enter "Facebook Live," a streaming interview feature
that the social network launched last year and has
since featured one-on-one interviews with figures
ranging from rock star and activist Bono and talk
show host Conan O'Brien to former British Prime
Minister Tony Blair and politicians like U.S. Rep.
Justin Amash, R-Mich. But this is the first time a
sitting president has used Facebook Live to reach
out directly to voters.
"We're honored that President Obama will be visiting
headquarters later this month and will be using the
Facebook platform to communicate with an
international audience," said Andrew Noyes, a
Facebook spokesman. "We're really heartened that
political figures are using Facebook to organize and
reach people in a direct, personal and simple way
that was really unimaginable a decade ago."
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