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Euro digi chief 'H-dot' #twitterfail: 'My favourite app is the weather app'

Oettinger's attempt to follow Ansip goes titsup

It took Gunther H-dot Oettinger more than a month to follow his boss Andrus Ansip’s lead and take part in a live Twitter chat, so you might think he would prepare well and walk it. Well, you'd be wrong.

He showed up late, left early and said nothing we hadn’t heard before, provoking the ire of the Twitterati.

Twitter user Hans Hafner was incredulous: “Did @GOettingerEU seriously just bail out of [the live chat] after about 40 minutes?” Another user, Harold Tor, said: “WHAT?! He's gone??” Others wondered “has Oettinger got the keyboard connected?” and suggested he had “no ears”.

The majority of questions seemed to have been chosen in advance and were overwhelmingly in German - not surprising since the whole event was orchestrated by the German press agency rather than Oettinger’s Commish team. User Guy Levin asked: “Was anyone actually able to follow the chat in English?”

It seems the new Digital Economy Commissioner isn’t taking his own advice when he said “In the digital world you will not get very far with German. Of course it's right that in the digital sector in particular English is the most-used language and for that reason it must play a pivotal role in schools and further education.”

The renowned digi-phobic Oettinger was obviously keen to improve his tech credentials, informing the world he has around 40 apps on his phone.

“My favourite is the weather app because my job takes me regularly around Europe and beyond and I do not always want to take a coat with me if there is no need,” he added, prompting user Alix Lad to comment:

Gigaom journalist David Meyer said that "thanks to today's chat, I learned ...".

Finally, someone called Jimmy pointed out that Oettinger “needs to take a couple of lessons from his boss on this live chat thing, perhaps he should #AskAnsip?” ®

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