The White House hosted its first town hall utilizing Twitter on July 6 before an in-person audience that was also webcast over WhiteHouse.gov and http://askobama.twitter.com. Users of the micro-blogging network sent over a million tweets using the hashtag #AskObama to pose questions to President Barack Obama. Only a select few made the cut, however.

Questions were restricted to the platform's trademark 140 characters and encouraged to focus on jobs and the economy. Obama offered spoken, unabbreviated responses and was not limited to 140-character tweets.

"Neither President Obama nor I know what the questions will be. They're completely decided by you," said Twitter co-founder and Executive Chairman Jack Dorsey at the beginning of the town hall where he served as moderator.

Dorsey's assertion is debatable, considering eight independent "curators", selected by Twitter, had the final say on what questions would be read by Dorsey at the event. Twitter also partnered with Austin, Texas-based Mass Relevance to conduct a first round of curation and to integrate conversations for the event. "Algorithms behind Twitter search will identify the Tweets that are most engaged with via Retweets, Favorites and Replies," added Twitter in a blog post.

The "official Q&A Tweets" were select questions re-tweeted by @townhall, and summaries of Obama's responses tweeted by @whitehouse. 

Not everyone agreed with the curation process. "Twitter curators are apparently using the #boringtweets hashtag to find questions. #AskObama," tweeted @ryangrim. And "Curators for picking tweets, that doesn't seem very New Media... #askobama," added @evanbanks.

A glance at the #AskObama hashtag on Twitter reveals more abrasive questions and statements than those that made it past gatekeepers--including tweets on drug policy, sex, and sports and movie references.

However, curators did allow a tweet from Rep. John Boehner (R-Ohio), or @johnboehner: "After embarking on a record spending binge that's left us deeper in debt, where are the jobs?"

"Obviously John is the speaker of the House, he is a Republican and so this is a slightly skewed question," began Obama's response, appearing surprised the tweet was allowed.

The event rounds out what has become a series of Obama administration town halls hosted on various social media platforms. On April 20, President Barack Obama joined Facebook CEO and founder Mark Zuckerberg for a Facebook town hall and in January the White House hosted a town hall with the Google-owned video site YouTube.

During the Facebook town hall the White House also opted for spoken responses rather than responding to questions in the medium, or the short-format they were presented. According to the Washington Post, Obama began the Facebook town hall with a 689-word opening statement and responded to the first question with a 1,484-word answer.

In an press conference made in advance of the Twitter Town Hall, White House Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer reportedly told reporters that the White House has "done a Facebook town hall. We've done a number of Q&A interactions with YouTube...if you're going to communicate with the broad public, it is no longer sufficient to simply do it through traditional mainstream media. You have to go beyond that."

While Pfeiffer and White House New Media Director Macon Phillips helped organize the event, but the White House said the question selection was firmly in the hands of Twitter users, Twitter corporate, eight curators and Mass Relevance, and not guided by the press office. Both touted the town hall as an innovative event, however.

For more:
- see this video of Obama tweeting from the White House (soon to be updated with the full town hall webcast)

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