Tuesday, May 5, 2009

White House Embraces Social Media



What is Social Media? Wikipedia defines it. “At its most basic sense, social media is a shift in how people discover, read and share news, information and content.”


With the success of Barack Obama’s campaign through the use of social media web tools to gain fundraising and support, the White House has officially launched pages on Facebook, Myspace and Twitter. This transition keeps web savvy citizens up to date on the latest news and information. You can probably imagine that Obama himself is too busy lately to keep up with his old Twitter account, so this new account is the perfect way for others in the White House to “tweet” on his behalf and keep people informed about what’s going on. 


In their ways of “old habits and stale thinking”, as stated by Obama, they are fundamentally changing the way that they do business in the White House. I believe the plan is to build a new foundation for the 21st century and the way to go about it is by reforming the government so it is more efficient and more creative-through social media. 


In a recent blog post titled WhiteHouse 2.0, the White House says,

 “In addition to WhiteHouse.gov, you can now find us in a number of other spots on the Web: Facebook .com/WhiteHouse, Myspace.com/WhiteHouse and Twitter.com/WhiteHouse.”


As you can see, technology has profoundly impacted how and where we gain information. These sites like Myspace, and Facebook have become the ways of communication to one another. If you look, you can see the demographics continue to shift. Now more than half of the Myspace visitors are age 35 or older. New users pour onto these sites every day, not only to keep up the communication with their friends but also to get insight on what’s happening around the world. 


 It seems the White House has noticed that WhiteHouse.gov is an important part of the Administrators effort to reach the public quickly and effectively-but it isn’t the only way. 



Ali Magnano

Director of PR

Richter10.2 Media Group

http://richter10point2.com


No comments: