SAN FRANCISCO, Ca – Twitter is getting $1.38 Billion of the $12 Billion in federal stimulus money targeted at better interentz for allz to help pay for a new Longer Message Project
President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden announced the grants during a town hall-style meeting in San Francisco on Friday.
The nations first low character limit or “micro-blogging” would be extended from a lowly 140 character limit to a new, longer, 256 character limit. The funding provides for an additional 116 characters of text in each message, a new logo and a new service unavailable screen that no longer features a flying whale on it.
See breakdown of stimulus dollars
Obama said focusing on building 21st-century computer infrastructure projects is an important element of the country’s economic recovery.
"It creates jobs immediately, and it lays the foundation for a vibrant economy in the future," Obama said.
Though the administration bills the program as “Longer Message Internet," most U.S. projects won’t reach the lengths seen in Europe and Asia. California’s tweets would be by far the longest, exceeding the 200 character limit achieved by some messaging platforms overseas.
Some of the money will go toward messages with top limits of 110 characters, a length already surpassed by twitter, while other funds — such as the $400 million allotted to Ohio, Cleveland, Columbus, Dayton and Cincinnati — will be for messages no longer than 79 characters.
A half-dozen Cabinet members and other senior administration officials were fanning out across the country for social networking events Thursday and today. The White House said message projects will create or save thousands of jobs in areas including site design, graphic design, planning, engineering and server maintenance and operations.
Obama told the crowd at Thursday’s town hall that when the Longer Message Project is finished, "I’m going to come back down here and tweet on it."
Internet Czar Susan Crawford and members of Congress have acknowledged that they expect much of the expertise and equipment to be supplied by foreign companies. Mostly outsourced tech workers from India.
The $8 billion investment is just a start. Last year, Obama asked Congress in his budget request for an additional $1 billion a year for five years. Congress for this year approved another $2.5 billion that remains to be awarded. And Obama is expected to ask for more social networking funds when his budget is presented next week.
Also, Crawford has hinted that some of the $1.5 billion allotted in the stimulus plan for discretionary Internet projects may go toward longer message projects.
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Yeah, I know… that’s pretty silly. But then, so is spending Billions on a rail system that will only make us “more like europe”. You have two scenarios… either no one will ride the trains (I wouldn’t) or they will put a nail in the coffin of our airline industry… you pick.
flag@whitehouse.gov if you’ve got a problem with it.
Already have one mail on this… Yes it’s a parody of the article about wasting money on high-speed rail. Yes, I wrote it. No Twitter isn’t getting extended… We’ll just have to muddle along. Yes, I’m an ass.
Have you not already reported yourself to Whitehouse.gov? I have. And if you have too, it’ll do no good for me to report the wrong path you are taking toward helping improve world conditions for Michelle’s children… Obamaworld is already aware of your transgressions.
I’ve been thinking about building this high-speed rail system. Until recently, once someone had made it through airport security you could pretty much relax and enjoy your flight, expecting no more surprises. I think that still holds for our domestic routes, for the most part.
But with high-speed rail there will be miles and miles of unsupervised track in some pretty desolate places, tempting some religious fanatic to come pull a couple spikes. Look at Germany’s experience with their high-speed train derailing.
IF-
they do build this system and,
IF it becomes a popular alternative to flying, it will be more vulnerable to terrorism than the airlines, it seems to me.
I won’t be aboard.
Will others come to this realization? If so, this project is Billions of $$$$ wasted from the start.
I haven’t reported myself to whitehouse.gov yet. It felt a bit too much like self promotion.
High speed rail. In reading up on this I’ve seen thousands of liberal comments about the safety issue. Almost all of them claim that if the NYC subway hasn’t been attacked yet this won’t be either. ummm… wot? It’s like no one remembers the firebomber from 1994… or the sarin gas attacks in tokyo or the chemical weapon attacks in russian or the bombs in spain or worse the bombs in London or the French attack that failed or … *sigh* revisionist.