In an appeal to the tech-savvy public, the White House’s Web site opened itself to Internet-submitted questions for President Obama’s online town hall meeting Thursday morning.

The virtual meeting — which was a new take on President Franklin Roosevelt’s fireside chats — reached out to online followers as Obama tries to rally an anxious country in support of his solutions to the economic crisis.

The idea that a president would want to talk directly to the American people has been around since the days of FDR, but what was new about Obama’s online town hall is that it encouraged members of the public to interact with each other, said Julie Moos, director of Poynter Online, a nonprofit journalism site.

“By allowing [Internet users] not just to submit questions but to see the other questions … and to rank the questions continues to connect them in the same way that the [Obama] campaign did,” Moos said. “And I think that’s one of the most innovative things that they’re doing.”

During the address, the online community commented on Obama’s answers and the format of the town hall. Users could watch streaming video of the question-answer session online at WhiteHouse.gov as well as on CNN.com.

These excerpts were taken from this CNN.com article on March 26, 2009.