It wasn't how US viewers usually see politicians on television:
- No commercial breaks
- No interruptions or difficult questions from seasoned journalists
- A stream of sometimes obscene comments from online viewers flowing along beneath the screen.
Yes, President Obama's live broadcast on Facebook was different.
For the President, it was a great opportunity to explain his case at length (with up to seven-minute answers) with nobody trying to hurry him up, cut him off or contradict him.
Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg sat opposite as programme host, the two of them on matching Andy Williams-style stools, in white shirts with rolled-up sleeves, with only Zuckerberg's unbuttoned collar, jeans and trademark trainers suggesting a low level of sartorial dissent.
Obama knew he was among Friends, if not friends. His Facebook page has 19.3 million fans - way ahead of rivals', like Sarah Palin's 2.8 million.
He made reference to being older than the assembled company - recent political history having been made "when most of you were in diapers". The live audience seemed to be mostly Facebook staff. There was a sense of being visited by a favourite uncle.
The US press found some political content to report from the event, but there was more interest in the President's remark that Zuckerberg had only acquired his jacket and tie for a previous dinner they'd had together. At the end of the show, Zuckerberg presented the President with a Facebook hoodie.
This kind of political event, outside the apparatus of editorial checks and balances that would surround a big political appearance on network television, is either refreshing or rather alarming depending on your attitude to Facebook's increasing influence.
And it may not be quite the easy win for the President that it appears. The Financial Times today quotes a political consultant who worked with President Clinton, warning that the President should be careful not to "align" himself too closely with a company that may run into political controversy over, for instance, privacy legislation.
It's hard to imagine Facebook issuing the same kind of invitation to a party leader in the UK. For one thing, a British audience would not be as respectful. The deference difference is perhaps partly due to a US president also being Head of State.
There was no Nick Robinson to pick over what came out of it. Instead, Zuckerberg's sister Randi, who works in marketing at Facebook, summed it up in discussion with a PR person from the company's Washington office: "That was quite an event!"
On the page for the show on Facebook today is the information that the video has had 20,209,000 viewer minutes - which is not bad for an hour of the President's time.
