President Barack Obama had a little fun today on Twitter despite spending most of his time talking about serious topics such as the looming fiscal cliff and middle-class tax cuts.

The president likes to take to Twitter, Reddit, and other social media to take questions from a much broader audience of both supporters and those who disagree with him.

Indeed, House of Representatives Republican majority leader Eric Cantor tweeted, “Mr. President, time to get serious. Let’s protect small businesses and families from a harmful increase in tax rates and cut spending. #my2k”

The president did not respond to this tweet, but to be fair, it wasn’t a question.

Obama does take some tough questions, though they are undoubtedly vetted by his communications team before he answers them. The majority of today’s discussion centered on extending tax cuts for the middle class. Many tweets were about extending the tax cuts versus cutting more government spending, but his Twitter gabfest had a few goofy moments as well.

Obama answered eight questions and retweeted one picture of his hands typing responses taken and tweeted by Pete Souza, the White House’s official photographer. Here are our favorites. You can check out the full conversation on Storify.

Question from @dontbeaprat:

Question from @Mica4Life:

Picture by @PeteSouza:

President Obama photo via The White House/Flickr

Barack Obama continues to embrace technology. Today he will hold a “town hall” meeting at 2pm Eastern on Twitter, seemingly as a response to a number of questions posed to him on the social network about middle class tax cuts.

The White House’s director of public engagement, Jon Carson, tweeted, “At 2ET today, President Obama will answer questions on @twitter about extending middle class tax cuts. Ask with #My2K.”

The official White House Twitter account went on to say, “Good to see lots of folks on twitter speaking out on extending middle class tax cuts. I’ll answer some Qs on that at 2ET. Ask w/ #My2k –bo”

President Obama early on established that when a tweet is signed with “–bo” that means it actually came from him and not a staffer. His Twitter account retweeted both of these tweets.

For the town hall, President Obama will be replying from @WhiteHouse.

Middle-class tax cuts have been a hot button issue in discussions around the U.S. Federal budget and the “Fiscal Cliff.” He is currently rallying to extend tax cuts on the middle-class and perhaps instill some hope in the New Year. Republicans in Congress are not in favor of extending tax-cuts for the middle-class only and are concerned this would mean higher taxes on higher earners.

Two hours ago at the time of writing this post Obama tweeted, “Congress can act — right now — to stop taxes from going up on middle-class families. Tell them why they should #My2K” with a link to his website.

Obama has been very tech-savvy in both his presidency and the campaign leading up to his re-election. He recently held a similar question and answer session on popular social sharing site Reddit. You can see a picture of him proving that he was on Reddit above. The event was so popular, it knocked Reddit offline for many visitors.

President Obama image via President Obama

Twitter hosted a live video Twitter Town Hall on July 6 by Twitter, during which the President chatted with the microblog service’s Executive Chairman, Jack Dorsey. (Note his fantastic posture!) During the town hall President Obama answered tweets made by users with the #AskObama hash tag.

The Boston Globe took samples of the tweets with the hash tag made before the event started, and compared them with questions asked by journalists during the past two weeks of White House briefings. The chart breaks the questions into subjects and the percentage of who asked what.

Let’s play a game.

A. Who do you think asked the most questions about jobs?

B. Who asked the most questions about congress?

C. Who had more questions about marijuana?

D. Who asked about immigration the most?

Answers follow!

A. 12 percent of tweets included the terms “job” or “employment,” while only three percent of journalists used the terms in their questions. This was the most popular subject for Twitter users, followed by the subject of the “deficit” with seven percent.

B. 24 percent of journalists asked questions pertaining to “congress,” as opposed to two percent of Twitter users. This was the most common subject for journalists, followed by “deficit” and “parties” (i.e. “republican” and “democrat,” not frat.)

C. Less than two percent of Twitter users asked about “marijuana.” No journalists asked questions about this topic.

D. 1.1% of twitter users and 1.3% of journalists asked questions pertaining to immigration. It was one of the least popular subjects.

The tweet was sent today during Obama’s Twitter Town Hall live broadcast hosted by Twitter Executive Chairman Jack Dorsey. The event let citizens ask the president questions by adding the #AskObama hash tag to the end of their message.

The tweet, sent from the White House’s official account, restated the first question Obama addressed: “in order to reduce the deficit,what costs would you cut and what investments would you keep – bo”.

Admittedly, the tweet was a bit bland. You would think Obama and his team could have come up with something better, especially considering the event was announced almost a week ago. Obama’s second tweet of his 2012 campaign might end up being more interesting, since he won’t have a live broadcast consuming his thoughts.

Dorsey did a good job of keeping the conversation serious during the event. He avoided off-topic tweets such as “And now for the most important question of the day: #STARWARS or #STARTREK?” and instead selected questions that were more pressing. With NASA’s shuttle program nearing an end, someone asked about the future of the space program.

Obama said he continues to support space exploration, “but rather than just continue same thing, let’s invest in tech advances for the next horizon.” That next horizon, he added, could be in commercial space travel or a mission to Mars.

The president also spent time discussing the budget, small businesses, government spending and education, among other topics. The broadcast highlighted questions from a variety of citizens as well as a few higher profile Twitter users. Both New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof and Speaker of the House John Boehner had their questions highlighted during the event by Dorsey.

“With 9.1% unemployment & “shovel ready” jobs a bust, will you admit the ‘stimulus’ was a mistake?” Boehner tweeted hours before the event started.

The entire broadcast will be available later today on The White House’s official website.

The Twitter Town Hall is the latest entry in Obama’s White House 2.0 initiative, which aims to make the White House more accessible via web services like Facebook and YouTube. Much like the Twitter event, the president has also participated in several Facebook Town Hall meetings.

The White House has created a new twitter account, @townhall, that will serve as a central source of updates for the event. Twitter has also set up a special site for the event to promote the #AskObama hashtag, which will be the way for Twitter users to submit questions for the event. And as with all Twitter hashtags, you can also search it on the site to keep track of the conversation.

The Twitter Town Hall is the latest entry in Obama’s White House 2.0 initiative, which aims to make the White House more accessible via web services like Facebook and YouTube. It’s surprising that there hasn’t been a Town Hall event yet using Twitter, though the White House has asked for questions from the service for past events. In April, Obama held a similar Town Hall on Facebook.

The news also coincides with the announcement last week that Obama has begun tweeting from his own account, @BarackObama. As his presidential campaign gears up again for 2012, I suspect we’ll be seeing even more online outreach from Obama as he strives to recapture the youth vote that helped him win the White House in 2008.