If Bill Clinton was America’s first Internet president (introducing WhiteHouse.gov and forcing all federal agencies to get online) and George W. Bush was America’s first digital president (introducing podcasting, video and online chats) then Barack Obama will be America’s first social networking president, according to David Almacy who directed President Bush’s Internet operations from 2005 – 2007. This is according to a story published today by Jose Antonio Vargas in today’s Washington Post.
You can look to change.gov, the transition website the Obama campaign created to capture resumes (290,000 thus far) and allow people to interact with the transition team. The site offers a blog and allows for users to submit comments, both good and bad (see Rick Warren’s announcement). It has also hosted several “Open for Questions” discussion sessions. According to Eric Schmidt of Google, “This is a part of our Internet culture, and it’s an emerging part of our political culture — you, as a citizen, get to talk back to your government.”
A month ago Mr. Obama’s campaign manager, David Plouffe, sent a message to Obama supporters requesting their input as to what to do as they plan for the future. This week, the Pew Center released a report that says that 51% of Obama’s online supporters expect to receive e-mails, text messages and other forms of communications from the administration. There have been several stories written about this in recent weeks.
And then there’s this news from Israel where its New York consulate held a 2-hour press conference on Twitter to discuss the current war.
Mr. Obama has stated that he will name a chief technology officer – a new position – to his administration. How and where that person will operate is yet to be known. Hopefully the CTO will have real authority and can avoid a bloated bureaucracy. With so many social media tools available to the new administration, it would be shame for Mr. Obama not to use them.