President Obama joined Facebook, MySpace and Twitter -- all burgeoning online communities -- on Friday in what some are calling an effort to calm hysteria surrounding the swine flu outbreak.
"In creating the new social media pages, the White House endorsed the Internet maxim that no matter your prestige, power, or stature, it often makes more sense to go to where people already are than to wait for them to come to you," writes Nancy Scola, on the blog TechPresident. The crosspartisan blog started as an effort to cover political activity on the Web during the 2008 presidential election, where then-candidate Obama reigned supreme.
You can now, once again, chill with him at the following locations:
A blog entry on WhiteHouse.gov announcing the foray into virtual reality hints that the timing was prompted by a need to get info out about the swine flu.
"Today the White House is taking steps to expand how the administration is communicating with the public, including the latest information and guidance about the H1N1 virus," the site states, with an embedded link to sister site CDC.gov.
On the microblog Twitter, the White House is listed as "following," or receiving mini-blog updates, from three CDC users and one State Department user. Meanwhile, 12,206 netizens are following the White House's updates.
Aliya Sternstein
Aliya Sternstein reports on cybersecurity and homeland security systems for Nextgov. She has covered technology for nine years at such publications as National Journal's TechnologyDaily, Federal Computer Week and Forbes. Before joining Government Executive, she covered agriculture and derivatives trading for Congressional Quarterly. She has been a guest commentator on C-SPAN, WTOP and Federal News Radio. She is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania.
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