While the Republicans were at their national convention, Barack Obama went on the Internet, specifically the popular social site Reddit, under its "AMA" - Ask Me Anything - section. His chat was announced about half an hour before with an original message: "Hi, I'm Barack Obama, President of the Untied States. Ask me anything. I'll be taking your questions for half an hour starting at about 4:30 ET." More than 200,000 visitors engaged with Obama, many of them getting error messages as servers struggled and some crashed. Obama tries to win viral votes by answering questions on internet freedom ("fight hard to make sure the internet remains the open forum for everybody"), his most difficult decision in office ("surge our forces in Afghanistan"), to the best NBA player ever ("Jordan").

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