Palace adopts Obama's 'Twitter Town Hall' for Duterte

MANILA, Philippines — In a bid to reach out to millennials and the youth, the communications team of President Rodrigo Duterte is working on a town hall activity using microblogging platform Twitter.

"We're planning a 'barangay hall' activity. Just like 'Twitter Town Hall' of (US President) Barack Obama but this time a video live stream," said Presidential Communications Secretary Martin Andanar.

Andanar met on Tuesday with Twitter representatives led by Rishi Jaitly, vice president of media for Asia Pacific, Middle East and North Africa. Jaitly shared his views on the social networking site's collaboration with the Philippine government to reach online followers during a meeting at the Presidential Communications Office (PCO) at Malacañang.

When the president assumed office, the PCO team engaged in an ambitious social media project to propagate the administration's campaign. They launched hashtag #PartnersForChange.

"(The) meeting is about how Twitter can help us the president communicate the government's message," Andanar added.

Andanar said the project is similar to the Obama "Twitter Town Hall" where the US president reaches out to communities.

"It's similar. Twitter, this time will hold the first video town hall. This the first time Twitter is doing it," he added.

Andanar said they are hoping to launch the project  by the fourth week of August.

In 2011, Twitter said that Obama made history as the first president to live tweet. The hour-long event was hosted by Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey.