The President called himself as a "Twoosh master," referring to when someone uses all 140 characters in a tweet, in a video from a Twitter Q&A he did on Thursday. We'd like to dispute his claim of social media mastery.
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Because we can't take everything the President says at face value, we looked into the matter and discovered something shocking: the tweet in question wasn't a "Twoosh." Here's video of the President bragging about his social media skills:
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We're suspending our disbelief that anyone ever says "twoosh" (it sounds like a dirty word), but here's the President's supposed perfect tweet:
.@jwarner180 bio fuels, wind , solarall getting cheaper each year & oil getting more expensive. Why we need all-of-the-above strategy. -bo
— The White House (@whitehouse) May 24, 2012
Now, in the video you can see the President writing and submitting the Tweet. The counter on Twitter's website reads zero, but we've independently verified using Character Count Tool, checking with our desktop Twitter client, and even counting each character by hand, that the Tweet in question was NOT a perfect use of the 140 character limit.
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When typing on Twitter, the counter doesn't recognize when you include and extra space at the end of a sentence. The President used an extra space after "bo," which caused the counter to read zero when he hit send. From the first character to the last, though, the President's tweet only runs 139 characters.
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There are other problems with the President's supposed Twitter perfection. The "wind , solar" part of the Tweet should be changed. The space before the comma is unnecessary and should be removed, which would bring it down to 138 characters.
What's worse is that the Tweet had potential for perfection, but the constraints of the character limit got to the President's head. He used an ampersand to try and save characters, and really, outside of Twitter who uses ampersands? No one. No one, and people who write movie titles. That's who. Had the President cleaned up the errant space before the comma said, "and oil getting more expensive," he would have used all 140 characters and could rightfully claim the title of "Twoosh master."
Shame on you, Mr. President. That tweet is far from perfect.