The Obama Presidency
|
TOOLBOX
   Resize
COMMENT
 Discussion Policy
 CLOSE
Comments that include profanity or personal attacks or other inappropriate comments or material will be removed from the site. Additionally, entries that are unsigned or contain "signatures" by someone other than the actual author will be removed. Finally, we will take steps to block users who violate any of our posting standards, terms of use or privacy policies or any other policies governing this site. Please review the full rules governing commentaries and discussions. You are fully responsible for the content that you post.
Who's Blogging  |
White House Joins Networking Sites
Will the BlackBerry-ing president fire off the tweets himself?
The White House announced yesterday that it had established a presence on Twitter, Facebook and MySpace. The news came in a blog posting on WhiteHouse.gov.
In a nod to the informal tone of the Web, Obama's Twitter username is an all-lowercase "whitehouse."
The White House new-media team wrote in the posting: "Technology has profoundly impacted how -- and where -- we all consume information and communicate with one another."
About two hours after the announcement, Obama's Twitter account already had 2,281 followers. It had sent five updates, two of them related to the swine flu outbreak.
The official White House pages on MySpace and Facebook also link to flu-related information. As of Friday afternoon, the White House had nearly 400 friends on MySpace and about 490 fans on Facebook.
The White House also maintains an active presence on Flickr, Vimeo, YouTube and iTunes.
But questions remain: What will happen, for instance, when a Facebook user voices displeasure on the official White House page? During the presidential campaign, Obama was forced to respond to users of My.BarackObama.com, his own social networking platform, when they organized and conveyed their opposition to one of his policy positions.
-- Jose Antonio Vargas
