Openness and transparency -- as well as a willingness to embrace 21st century technology -- have been staples of President Barack Obama's platform since the early days of his campaign. So it's no surprise that the commander in chief has boarded the
social networking bus. On Friday, the president and the White House opened up Facebook and
MySpace pages and a Twitter account. The White House continues to use Flickr, Vimeo, YouTube and other social
networking platforms as well.
Updates coming from the White House through Twitter, Facebook and other channels thus far seemed to be informed by what's found on the White House's official blog at www.whitehouse.gov/blog.
In the past few days, those have included updates about swine flu from President Obama's weekly address, a link to a Department of Health & Human Services report on rural health care, the president's comments on retiring Supreme Court Justice David Souter and conversation starters on what's being done to keep certain jobs in the U.S. instead of outsourcing them overseas.
As of 2 p.m. EDT on Monday, the White House Twitter feed had about 38,000 followers.
"Technology has profoundly impacted how -- and where -- we all consume information and communicate with one another," read a White House blog post called "WhiteHouse 2.0" on Friday. "WhiteHouse.gov is an important part of the administration's effort to use the Internet to reach the public quickly and effectively -- but it isn't the only place."
One question to emerge thus far: Is the president himself updating any of these messages? The answer is probably not, and at least one report, from the The Washington Post, says there is "authoritative evidence" there's no plan for Obama to do any social networking interaction himself.
"I don't think the president is the right person for this," said Macon Phillips, the White House's director of new media and overseer of www.whitehouse.gov, to the Post's Jim Hoagland. "There are better ways to engage the microblogging community."
