The Social Media White House

Posted: November 10th, 2008 | By: Steve Mullen | Filed under: Social Media News | 1 Comment

Imagine receiving Tweets on Twitter from the president. That’s one way social media is likely to be used in the Obama White House. It appears the next administration will use social media more than any before it. An article in today’s Washington Post points out that President-Elect Barack Obama is planning to expand the White House Communications Office to include taking the message directly to the people, bypassing the traditional media altogether:

Just as John F. Kennedy mastered television as a medium for taking his message to the public, Obama is poised to transform the art of political communication once again, said Joe Trippi, a Democratic strategist who first helped integrate the Internet into campaigning four years ago.

“He’s going to be the first president to be connected in this way, directly, with millions of Americans,” Trippi said.

The nucleus of that effort is an e-mail database of more than 10 million supporters. The list is considered so valuable that the Obama camp briefly offered it as collateral during a cash-flow crunch late in the campaign, though it wound up never needing the loan, senior aides said. At least 3.1 million people on the list donated money to Obama.

Read the entire article here.

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