Current President of the United States, Barack Obama, is by far the most tech savvy president we’ve had in the history of the country. He and his campaign are extremely active on Twitter, and recently held a question and answer session on Google Hangouts.

The President enjoys music as well, as he has apparently joined popular music streaming service Spotify:

A little Wilco, a bit of No Doubt—check out what else made it onto the new official #Obama2012 campaign playlist: OFA.BO/pHpWYy

— Barack Obama (@BarackObama) February 9, 2012

The playlist, which is being dubbed the “official 2012 campaign playlist”, includes tracks picked by Obama’s campaign staff, along with a few of his favorites.

The playlist is heavy on country acts like Sugarland and Darius Rucker, but does get a bit edgy thanks to a track by Florence + The Machine:

You can follow the President’s Spotify playlist by clicking this link and subscribing to it in the app.

Every campaign needs a soundtrack, right? It’s not surprising that the Obama campaign would make theirs public.

Mainstream Twitter interaction with television programming continues, this time with the Fox News broadcast of tonight’s Republican debate in Iowa. The network is asking you to share your thoughts on how the candidates are doing by using your best Twitter voice.

Fox is using Twitter in a pretty unique way, according to the company blog:

Political debates give citizens a way to hear from the candidates themselves on the issues that matter most. In the past, we’ve all experienced this important phase in the election cycle by gathering around the TV to watch candidates exchange views in real-time.

Twitter helps you share the debate-watching experience more directly and powerfully by bringing you closer to the candidates, commentators and other voters. Tonight, you can weigh in with a Tweet as the debate progresses. At 9-11 p.m (ET) / 6-8 p.m. (PT), seven Republican presidential candidates will take the stage in Iowa and participate in the Fox News debate. Tell Fox News, the campaigns and pundits whether or not you think the candidates are really answering the questions.

#Answer or #Dodge?

Two simple hashtags are being introduced by Fox News tonight, and you can attach them to your tweet full of thoughts about a candidate.

If a candidate is on target, use the hashtag #Answer, and if they’re not on the up and up, simply attach #Dodge to your tweet.

You can follow all of the action in real-time over at http://live.foxnews.com

It appears as if Twitter is getting ready for a huge political season with the 2012 elections coming up. The platform has become a home to many politicians, allowing them to reach out to their followers and supporters directly. This is a job well done by the Twitter Communications team, and it’s a foreshadowing of some unique uses for the platform, specifically on the campaign trail in 2012.

I’m sure Barack Obama and his team will be following the reactions.

Technology and politics go together like peanut butter and jelly. With Twitter being such a huge part of the campaign in 2008, specifically for Barack Obama, mainstream media is looking for more ways to visualize data to tell the whole story of a presidential election.

NBCPolitics has inked an exclusive deal with location check-in service foursquare, to provide data and graphics on where each candidate and their team is visiting, or checked into.

Here’s what the foursquare check-in data will look like on NBCPolitics.com, and future TV broadcasts:

The “Campaign Check-ins” map will be shown during the entire campaign cycle, leading up to the elections, on NBC’s site. In addition to this map, NBC and foursquare are creating co-branded political badges that will be available in 2012.

Vivian Schiller, Chief Digital Officer at NBC News had this to say about the partnership:

NBC News’ partnership with foursquare will allow our audiences to more fully engage with the 2012 campaign. By leveraging foursquare’s location-based technology, users will be able to go follow candidates and experience NBC’s election coverage in an innovative and unprecedented way.

This is a huge mainstream partnership for foursquare, giving the service the same kind of front and center treatment that Twitter had during the elections in 2008. Director of Media Partnerships for foursquare, Jonathan Crowley, sees this as a way for people to feel like they’re along for the entire campaign trail:

All politics is local, and foursquare is all about location; it’s the perfect way for politicians to communicate their actions to potential voters. Through this partnership with NBC News, we’re making it easy for people to keep up with all of the excitement on the campaign trail in real-time.

What will be even more interesting is if we’ll be able to get a decent sample size of data from foursquare to see how well-attended the voting booths are during the actual election.