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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)."
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.
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.
It may be partially about transparency in government, but it's much more about the perpetual campaign season. These days, politicians are always campaigning. The new mantra is it's never too early to start campaigning for the next race.
The Obama administration will use these tools to release a constant stream of positive spin. In the old days, Presidents had to rely on weekly radio addresses that no one listened to, daily press briefings that no one listened to, and press conferences that either happened too infrequently to sustain a message or so frequently that people got sick of them.
Now, with these services, the administration has the opportunity to campaign continuously in a low-key and less intrusive way that will, they hope, be more effective. Time will tell how well it works.
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.
Sure, but the active campaigning was usually reserved for the campaign season, meaning the several months before an election. The rest of the time was spent governing, albeit doing so in a way that would play well with the electorate come campaign time.
Now, it's all about "managing the message" and staying in campaign mode all the time. It's not about doing things that will "play well in Peoria", it's about constantly reinforcing the message that whatever it is you're doing is good for the people. It's the difference between doing the people's work and making sure the people think whatever it is you're doing is the people's work.
I wonder if through ANY of this, Obama is going to keep one of his election stump promises, to publish every bill he's going to sign, in its entirety at least 5 days before he signs it?
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........