Pawlenty's Innocent Mistake

Tim Pawlenty announced that he had formed an exploratory committee a few weeks ago with a Youtube video.  Last night, he announced in an interview with Piers Morgan on CNN, without any reservations, that he was running for president.  Great!

Well his staff didn't feel that way....As soon as Pawlenty made that statement, his staff scrambled to fix that mistake.  Most people would view this as strange and ridiculous, for we all know that he's running for president. 

So why did his staff get so excited over this mistake?  Because in a media saturated world, announcing that you are running for president is supposed to garner a lot more attention than what Pawlenty was met with last night.  The whole point of announcing the formation of an exploratory committee and then later actually running for president (outside of the legal implications, which don't apply in his case because under Federal Election Commission rules Pawlenty is already legally a presidential candidate) is to get media attention not once, but twice.  Each announcement is another opportunity to show yourself off. 

So Pawlenty blew this one big time and his staff has been scrambling to fix his mistake so in a few days or a week or so he can announce it all over again on Youtube or Facebook.  Check out this article and see the rest of the story for yourself.  Can you pick up on the reporter's apparent bias towards the end? 

How Many "Friends" Do You Have?

The 2012 election is going to be centered around social media.  In fact, some believe social media will be the tipping point for the election.  Candidates will either win the battle of sorely lose it over their social media expertise or lack there of.  Candidates will be fighting to amass the most amount of Facebook friends and Twitter followers as possible.

What amazes me is that I always laughed at the term "friends" when in the context of Facebook.  The rules of Facebook dictate that one must have hundreds of "friends" or else they are a nobody.  However 99% of these alleged "friends" are far from friends.  They are mere acquaintances at best who most likely will not be there for you when you really need them.

When it comes to the coming election though, these "friends" are what can make a candidate win or lose the election.  In a complete 180, these "friends" seem to play the role of real friends in the election.  So I guess the race begins to see who can successfully gather the most friends in cyberspace.  May the best candidate win!