Jon Metzler

President Obama’s love for his Blackberry - which model is it, anyway? - has been well-documented, and has inspired coverage of its in-kind marketing impact ($50M, according to the NYT), and a weekly column in the Economist on subjects the new President must face. Unlike President Bush, who forswore email during his two terms, President Obama has vowed to hold onto his, which, apparently will now be possible thanks to an encryption upgrade (link via AlleyInsider).

Congressmen and staff were early Blackberry adopters. I remember the tremendous freakout by staff, members and lobbyists alike during successive outages in Washington in 2005.

The immediacy of short-form, real-time messages will be a boon for researchers down the road, at such time that correspondence is made available. This also begs the question, do Presidents use emoticons?