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)."

Everyone is doing it....or else?

[Bob_Who]

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.

Re:I've been watching this for a while

[emocomputerjock]

I agree in principle, but the fact of the matter is that the sites they're choosing to use to spread that information have some of the most godawful security records. If we're relying on Obama's tweets for information, it's going to suck when some staffer gets hit with a worm while checking out some hot chick's profile and the next thing the rest of the world sees is something akin to Russia being outlawed.

Re:Is it possible to have enemys on facebook?

[Anonymous Coward]

Guess I should prep myself for the poor mods ;)

Looks like you're at "5, Interesting" to me. If someone had made the exact same post with "Bush" instead of "Obama" they would have been modded down to -1, Troll. Good old slashdot echo chamber. :)

Re:Hopefully....

[auric_dude]

I think he will soon be able to use his hardened 8830 http://www.billingworld.com/articles/regulatory/obama-close-to-getting-blackberry-back.html [billingworld.com] to address the leaders and peoples of the World when ever the urge takes him.

Re:Facebook

[cayenne8]

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?

Re:Facebook

[emag]

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?

Already broken, according to PolitiFact.com [politifact.com]. And boy did they get a lot of mail about that and several other ratings, from both sides, which says to me they probably are one of the more impartial reporting sites out there if they're pissing off everyone...

More to the point, I wonder if/when the webfilter @ the site I work at will start allowing Facebook, since it's blocked "as a security threat or inappropriate for government use". I can see the justification now: "But, see, the GSA has signed a deal, and the White House even has a Facebook (and Myspace) page. Surely the GSA and the White House know what's appropriate for government use..."

Re:Is it possible to have enemys on facebook?

[ravenshrike]

Only if you're stupid enough to believe his projections. Not to mention that on the level the .gov plays at, cash accounting debt is almost utterly meaningless. Accrual accounting is all that's important, and the spending outlays Obama's attempting to ram through will make the current SocSec/MediCare outlays(Which rack up to somewhere between 70-90 trillion dollars) look like fucking chump change.