I’m sitting here on my laptop with 4 tabs open in Chrome, one of which is the State of the Union address streaming live from the White House website. In another tab I have Twitter running and I’m amazed to see the number of people who are tweeting parts of the president’s speech.

At first I thought that was kind of cool, but now I’m getting a little confused by it. I don’t understand why certain people are sending these tweets. Do they agree with those points, or do they want to emphasize them?  Maybe they are trying to hit the highlights so that people not watching it can get the ‘cliff note’ version of the address in real time. 

I’m also confused why people are tweeting parts of the speech given the fact that the speech was posted to the internet late this afternoon. The exact content of the speech is out there to read for anyone who is interested.

But most of all I think the whole thing is totally awesome. Twitter is going nuts, the address is streaming to my laptop, I imagine Facebook is also very active at the moment. What an amazing time to witness our government in action. I hope the coming years brings more government use of the internet and social media to connect with the American people. 

Recently I saw a newly elected NY senator telling a TV reporter how she wants to connect with her constituents and how she’s going to Washington to change things. I really liked her message and her openness, but I also wish I could help her understand the internet and social media tools to help her connect with people all the time. I love the town hall type meetings and shaking hands at parades, but she could connect with people via Twitter whenever and wherever possible. The same is true of her website, a blog, Twitter, Facebook, etc. 

So far the president has said a lot of good and interesting things. I wish he would also say that the government is opening up and becoming more transparent. I would love to see the President challenge congress to use the internet to connect with people like never before. I doubt that will happen tonight, but I have a feeling it’s coming.