With time and the advent of technology it is but fair that man must adapt to the changes. The politicians of today are no far behind. Be it twitter or Facebook or any other social networking sites, politicians are coming up with new and improved forms of campaigning and reaching the people as a whole. Twitter seems to be the favorite amongst the politicians and now and then we see some encouraging, informative or debatable tweets being posted. It is as though an entire new generation of politicians have been born who have taken technology as their tool for campaigning.

The White House, led by President Obama, started to post on twitter not to campaign any kind of new bill/law, neither to inform about any form of media trivia nor did they try to create any kind of controversy which would lead to any form of negative publicity. The White House used twitter to make the American people aware of the dangers and precautionary methods of swine flu. The Library of Congress is also known to share lots of historical free pictures on Flickr and many agencies have opened up channels in YouTube to handle their media content.

My.barackobama.com is a website which allows hundreds of users to use the website as a blog and this is an online way of getting the opinion of the people forward to the President and his team. Such innovative ideas can be a huge boon to all such politicians who are looking forward to making a bigger change to the economy and social life of the people. Social media is the place where you can connect with millions instantly. What better way to get your voice heard?

The Indian politicians are also coming up with their own set of technology tools and tech-savvy mentalities. We are all aware of the controversies which were initially associated with Shashi Tharoor, but inspite of that, Mr. Tharoor has a huge fanbase known as “followers” on twitter and is a regular user of the service.

Not far behind is the C.M. of Gujarat, Mr. Narendra Modi. Mr. Modi is considered as one of the most tech-savvy politicians in India and is very often seen keying messages on his palmtop or browsing the internet on his laptop. It is highly encouraging to see that Indian politicians are coming up with new and innovative ideas to stay connected with the “junta”, a common Hindi term for the Common Man.

If you search on Facebook you will also come across a fan page dedicated to the Indian prime minister, Dr. Manmohan Singh. The fan page supports opinions of the direct fans and there are lots of updates from the minister’s side which talks about political as well as personal updates. A true visionary and a big supporter of technology, Dr. Singh has made good use of social media to bring about harmony in the online world.

Whenever Steve Ballmer talks, we all know it is Microsoft. The Microsoft CEO, will definitely not count his words while speaking about Microsoft.

So when Steve Ballmer, was questioned by Search Engine Land Editor in Chief,  Danny Sullivan, at the Search Marketing Expo in Santa Clara, California, on March 2, 2010 , let’s see what the CEO, Microsoft talked on Microsoft’s Bing, Windows Phone, Twitter and Google.

Let’s look at what the gentleman, who knows to play his cards right, said.

Bing!

He certainly binged on ‘Bing ‘, the Microsoft’s decision engine.

Ballmer did not deny the possibility of association with apple, just kept it slightly glanced off by mentioning, “A Bing for iPhone search deal is still possible”.

He mentioned that Windows Phone 7 series, unveiled on Feb 15^th in Barcelona, Spain, will definitely use only Bing as the Search engine. It was not made clear whether the smart-phones running windows mobile 6.x would be upgradable to the new operating system.

He also stated that,” Microsoft isn’t interested — at least for now — in releasing a Bing application for Android phones.”

Raw Twitter posts, buried in Bing, will they come up?

On Microsoft’s association with Twitter, he swerved the question by mentioning that though the partnership with Twitter is great, they are not sure about acquiring it. He said that as an independent company, Twitter has lot of value and creditability.” Would they have that same credibility with the user community, if they were captive?” he questioned back.

Has Bing been improving its offerings, in an attempt to eat away at Google’s share?

When queried about what future he sees for Bing against competition, the big wheel said, “There’s no good answer to this question. If you say ‘yes,’ you sound arrogant. If you say ‘no,’ you sound like you are happy with second place.  No one aims to be second, so the answer is ‘yes’”.

When asked whether he believed Microsoft would eventually overthrow Google in search, Mr. Ballmer said, “I don’t know how old I will be when that’ll happen”.

Looks like Mr. Ballmer admits that Google dominates the search engines.

Stirring up trouble for Google in Europe through third parties,

When Danny Sullivian confronted him on the article by the Wall street Journal on Microsoft steering third parties to push against Google in terms of antitrust issues, the suave entrepreneur handled the question with ease. He admitted that Microsoft had been in discussions with antitrust regulators over its search-engine rival being scrutinized by a number of government agencies, ranging from the Federal Trade Commission to the Department of Justice.

The CEO certainly knows to make hay while the sun shines.

Social Media – The word that is driving many people crazy is actually unpopular amongst the  CEOs of Fortune 100 companies. In a recent survey carried by ÜBERCEO, it was revealed that very few CEOs have ever touched the social media sites. And the ones who did create an account, never came back to update or manage their profiles on the social media sites.

The popular social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, Flickr, etc. have failed to lure the top bosses to use them. Take a look at the presentation from ÜBERCEO and get to know the real stats.

What did this presentation tell you? Do you think that the top bosses are lazy in not maintaining their social media profiles? Will their active participation help their companies to fare better than others?

Share your opinions and you might just be able to make a difference.