Slashdot Mirror
White House Joins Facebook, MySpace, Twitter
theodp writes "The official White House Blog called the move WhiteHouse 2.0 as the Obama administration unveiled its membership in a trio of the social-networking leaders: Facebook (157,606 fans and counting), MySpace (174,817 friends and counting) and Twitter (34,612 followers and counting)."
My wife and her High School friends use Facebook to stay in touch. Which seems to primarily revolve around sending drinks to each other. Transparency and reachability are certainly good, but, it does make you wonder how many people are going to send "buttery nipples" to the White House, and if that is actually a good thing or not.
If brevity is the soul of wit, then how does one explain Twitter?
Just like /. I want to make obama my enemy. Mod him troll/off topic/flamebait.
Guess I should prep myself for the poor mods ;) I think my excellent karma can take it though
Do not meddle in the affairs of sysadmins, for they are subtle, and quick to anger.
We're just over 100 days in, people. How about "White House 2.0 RC1?" I don't think we're ready to go gold just yet.
It's good to see them finally getting with the times and joining Mybook and Facespace, i mean it's what all the young dudes are doing.
You can't take the sky from me.
9:33 AM: gotta drop the kids off at the pool
9:53 AM: shit, no tp
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
These things just aren't cool anymore... not that they were cool to begin with, actually.
that does not mean that Obama or anybody with a secured systems (such as the football carrier) is hooking to these.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
The Obama administration is just leveraging all the tools they have available. More people can be reached via the web than anywhere else. I guess the only reason this is really news is that its an outbreak of common sense for a government agency to use these tools. I'm hoping it will allow for more transparency, but then again its just as easy to lie and fudge numbers online as it is through traditional media outlets.
The musings of just another geek and his junk.
I understand that these three social networking applications are popular, but I am already burning out on this trend. I was an early adopter but find myself just wanting to take a step back from the herding masses and regroup. I wonder if these proprietary web applications are really worthy of such Presidential endorsement. Perhaps we're just piling on the craze with Ellen, Ashton, and Oprah, as well as every texting teen and their friends with benefits. Its a good thing to see alternatives to newspaper start taking a hold, but I can't help but feel a little bit as though "we the sheeple" are being herded into this arrangement. Like cellular, its promise comes at a price, and with a commitment to corporate media monoliths. And I just hate feeding corporations in order to participate in the public community. I'll be interested to see how the White House copes with this bold dive into the national social networking media blast.
And the Obama admin wwiped out the tweets plus the friends when they reclaimed it.
Where's that storry?
She keeps sending photos of herself to me. Not a MILF in that one.
In keeping with the Obama administration's open adoption of modern American Pop Culture. The Whitehouse announced today of plans to start filming a new reality show called "Obama's BFF." The show will closely follow Obama in his search for a friendship with a world leader, akin to the Bush-Blair relationship. 16 world leaders will live in the Whitehouse for 8 weeks as they compete for Obama's friendship.
Who will be America's next ally? Find out this summer, only on Fox.
nowwherre?
are they taking information and ideas from us? That is, in terms of CITIZENS and not in terms of BUSINESS LOBBYISTS? We suffered through that for 8 long years (actually, more like 30). The WH and Congress NEED to change and start taking ideas that are good for the nation into consideration. None of this "let's give haliburton a contract with no oversight" kind of crap. Heck, I was just reading about a retired officer who figured out that he had been being given an extra .02 / paycheck, and the feds are going to ignore changing the system.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
How interesting. All these sites, unlike slashdot, allow you to state your friends; not foes.
-- I was raised on the command line, bitch
Why not Obama as a person? (might be there, dunno) What's next? Big Ben? Eiffel tower? I mean c'mon, shouldn't FB be a place for real people?? Or is White House a group? Too lazy to check.. Is White House going to be friends with Houses of Parliament and Req Square??
If I de-friend the White House on Facebook, will I get put on a watch list?
Your mind is clear / The things that you fear / Will fade with how much you / Believe what you hear
He joined linkedin.com during the election, too, and made a forum post about "How can I help you (to help me get elected" or whatever. Bunch of responses from people, no ack from him that I ever saw.
I responded to his forum post to ask if he was really there to participate and have any kind of dialog, or if he was just there to make it look like he was tech-savvy and connected, and all I got back was an invitation to connect.
They've had a feed for months now.
I think it is a waste of taxes to have people writting post in twitter. Seriously. I'm not american so they're not my taxes, but still looks stupid.
If the Whitehouse is putting more down in writing, on the Internet where it can easily be archived and searched through, will this lead to greater scrutiny from the public? Will they be more likely to be called on their backtracking?
Or, more likely, will they just make sure to never say anything of substance?
You could also say it's joining the 21st Century!
AC
Towards the end of his tenure he will end up on FML.
I think you underestimate just how much I just dont care.
Reminiscent of the 2006 Mike Judge Film, Idiocracy. What's Next?
I see defacement coming. :(
If the Whitehouse is putting more down in writing, on the Internet where it can easily be archived and searched through, will this lead to greater scrutiny from the public? Will they be more likely to be called on their backtracking?
Or, more likely, will they just make sure to never say anything of substance?
It doesn't really matter if they're scrutinized or called on for their backtracking. There are entire TV shows (Daily Show) dedicated to pointing stuff like that out. I remember watching an episode where they were talking about the bailouts and showing footage of congressmen talking about how good the bailouts were going to be and then cutting to another clip of the same person talking about how much they were against the bailouts and never supported them to begin with. People chuckle about it, but no one really cares. Its sad that it turned out like that, but short of forcing open revolt and exile, I don't know what can be done. Chances are the next bunch would be just as bad as the current, if not worse.
Support the EFF and Creative Commons. The war is coming, and they're supporting you...
Yeah, keep replying to yourself. It's helping.
Personally, I don't mind if they want to do a twitter, facebook or myspace page but I draw the line at Second Life. If they waste their time with that, I'll be mad.
"During My Service In The United States Congress, I Took The Initiative In Creating The Internet." -Al Gore
Yeah, that's a really good point.
Look at the whole WMD in Iraq debacle.
Maybe someone with a little more clout than The Daily Show needs to be confronting these guys. Someone who can bring about actual consequences would be a start.
By repeating the mistakes, do you mean 'doing nothing and letting the free market sort it out,' which is what Hoover did? Or do you mean, 'Enacting mildly socialist, temporary policies that begin to fix things immediately,' like FDR did?
FDR fixed the Great Depression with socialism, much as conservatives hate to admit it and try to rewrite history, the facts speak for themselves. Just look at economic data from the time. When Hoover did nothing, things got worse. When FDR started enacting his policies, things started to get better. When the Republicans made him scale back his policies, things got worse until he started them back up again.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
NewsSnips can potentially revolutionize govt.
Normally Govt is "closed door/access only".
But it would be funny if they didn't lock it down to start.
"Republicans Filibustering."
"Republicans Still Filibustering."
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
I think this way sounds much more fun... http://xkcd.com/576/
No comprende? Let me type that a little slower for you...
Mod parent up, for replying to an asshat who replies to his replies of his posts.
Related, there is more 'social data and social software' at the White House today. The WH Change website now uses OpenLayers and OpenStreetMap! Great to see such penetration of open data and open source :-)
Animoog.org
I thought White House 2.0 would have been the post-1814 White House, but that must have just been an increase in the minor version number.
Modding me down won't change the facts. Look at the economic data from the time. This is why everyone loved FDR. This is why he was elected for FOUR TERMS. He fixed things with socialism, where Hoover had left things up to the free market and made them worse.
You may hate the truth, but the truth doesn't care.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
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(for srsly, that was on the facebook one)
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
...as Alex Jones did on his radio show a few days ago. ;)
Mod parent down for calling the kettle black.
Mod parent up for entertaining use of aphorisms.
... until someone hacks their Facebook page.
You have grossly misunderstood the purpose of The Daily Show.
So far Obama has appointed some people to a number of positions that seem to show pretty concretely that he is following the same policies laid out by George W Bush regarding laws and policies around the DMCA, Business Process Patents, and support for the legal terrorism conducted by the RIAA. And now, here he is joining in on a number of technologies somewhat favored and very familiar to those people who generally detest these anachronistic abominations: Slashdotters.
So why not take advantage of this newly discovered direct access to the white house? Here we are, a very large group of people who have very strong opinions on all these cankerous laws, policies, and organizations, and now the "leader of the free world" has seemingly opened up communications channels directly to the White House that are second nature to most of us. Slashdotters all over America should use this opportunity to clue Obama in on how and why the DMCA tramples peoples rights, the RIAA is at best the last flailing of an outdated business paradigm, and at worst (which is usually), is the worst machination possible of bullying, akin to legal terrorism, and most important of all in my opinion, why Business Process Patents are harmful to competition and disastrous to innovation and progress. We can even give him a car analogy: like if there were business process patents around 1900, Ford would have patented a vague "process of transporting people and goods in horseless carriages," and there would have been a car monopoly back then, the price of cars would be artificially high, and we might still be riding horses now because of it (mind you, there might not be as much talk about global warming now, but that is another story).
I say Slashdotters across America because, after all, Obama is the American president (and not, like a lot of left wing Canadians seem to think, the Prime Minister of Canada... they don't seem to understand that American Democrat == (at best) small C Conservative... besides, the election was in AMERICA, NOT IN CANADA YOU BOZOS). But it is true that while America is rapidly losing ground as the world's economic powerhouse, many of these policies are felt around the globe. (I wonder if when China finally reigns supreme as the world's economic powerhouse, if the DMCA will be replaced by laws mandating software piracy?... just kidding... but....) So in that respect, Slashdotters from elsewhere should have a say in these matters too.
We should try to be polite at first, and use well reasoned arguments on why Obama should change the direction he seems to have started out on with respect to these various laws and policies. But at the same time, take advantage of the Slashdot Effect (while being polite and well reasoned) to show just how many people are opposed to the direction he has taken, and want the RIAA cut down at the roots, the DMCA updated to truly protect the copyright holder without trampling the rights of the purchaser, and to show some common sense and throw ALL business process patents in the garbage and instruct the patent office not to accept any more (and for good measure, line up every single stinking bottom feeding scum sucking, mother fucking patent lawyer against the law and kick every one of those god damned sores on the 'taint' of the universe squarely in the balls, or the cunt, while understanding that while some may have balls, they are all cunts .... OK maybe not, cunts are useful... Sorry... I'm better now... ummmm, this last bit might be considered a little, just a little too impolite a message to send to the white house, but all the rest still applies).
-- I ignore anonymous replies to my comments and postings.
Or do you mean, 'Enacting mildly socialist, temporary policies that begin to fix things immediately,' like FDR did?
That is a definition of "temporary" with which I am unfamiliar, unless meant in the same sense as "copyright limited to eternity minus a day".
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
OK; I'm find with transparent government, and I realize it'll take extra manpower to accomplish that (initially anyway); but having someone do social-networking sites it not the same as transparency.. wtf.
I want my $0.002 back I contributed to that persons salary!
----- The internet has given everyone the ability to have their voice heard equally as loud.. even if they shouldn't be
The Whitehouse is also posting photos to Flickr. I like the candid/behind the scenes pics, but all these touchy feely messages could easily become spin tools.
Right, we still have the WPA, and that's why our infrastructure is in such great shape and our bridges aren't falling down and such.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Trendiest President EVER!
It says a lot about the man when he decides to join the dumbest "Oprah technologies", instead of interesting and intelligent ones. Clearly he has absolutely no clue about any of it (if he did, I would give him more credit for intelligence than choosing those on his own), and he does it solely for publicity. Cheap and in poor taste.
End anonymous moderation and posting on
There's also now an "Official White House Photostream" user on flickr, which has some excellent photos, with many interesting shots of life and work inside the whitehouse.
Many of the pictures are unexpectedly candid as well. The white house photographers (there are several, but most of the photos in the stream seem to be from Pete Souza) are apparently given a lot of freedom to lurk around waiting for a good opportunity!
http://www.flickr.com/photos/whitehouse
We live, as we dream -- alone....