The Final State of the Union
This is historical material “frozen in time”. The website is no longer updated and links to external websites and some internal pages may not work.
Summary:
Whitehouse.gov is just one part of the White House's online outreach. The White House continues to work to reach Americans where they get and discuss information, while at the same time meeting its obligations under the Presidential Records Act.
Two years ago, the White House launched official profiles on Facebook, Twitter and MySpace. Since then we’ve grown quite a bit, both in terms of the number of connections we’ve made through these sites, as well as other places on the web that now feature an official White House presence.
As I wrote then, technology continues to change how and where Americans get information and discuss important issues online. It’s also means that any organization, including the White House, must recognize that its website is only one part of an effective online platform.
Let’s take a look at the range of places you can now connect with the White House online:
Social Networks
- Facebook: There are several pages, including our official page for the White House, the First Lady’s Let's Move initiative for a healthier generation of kids, the First Lady and Dr. Biden’s Joining Forces initiative to support our service members and their families, the Race to the Top initiative to promote innovation, reform and excellence in America’s public schools, the Educate to Innovate campaign to improve America’s performance in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics, and the White House Live application used with the many live streamed events by the White House.
- Twitter: The White House has many accounts to follow on Twitter, including @WhiteHouse, Press Secretary Jay Carney @PressSec, Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer @Pfeiffer44, White House photographer @PeteSouza, Spanish language content @LaCasaBlanca, healthy living advice @LetsMove, supporting our military families @JoiningForces, an automatic feed of White House Blog posts @blog44, and I’m @macon44.
- MySpace: The White House profile shares blog posts and photos.
- LinkedIn: The White House Group discusses important questions.
- Digg: The White House shares news, photos, and videos on this social news site.
Video & Multimedia
- YouTube: The White House channel, and the Let's Move channel make our videos available to a wide audience.
- Vimeo: The White House video channel syndicates our video content as well.
- Hulu: We post regular series of content such as President Obama's Weekly Address, and West Wing Week, as well as interesting and major pieces of content in the Speeches of President Obama, Inside the White House, Music and the Arts, and White House White Board channels.
- Flickr: The White House and Let's Move both post official and behind the scenes photos.
- iTunes: White House Podcasts allows you to automatically download the Weekly Address, Speeches and Events, West Wing Week, Music and the Arts events, Press Briefings, and more in either video or audio formats.
- UStream: The White House live streams are shared here.
Document Sharing
- Socrata: The White House shares data such as visitor logs.
- SlideShare: The White House posts documents such as the slides from the Enhanced State of the Union 2011.
One of the unique factors of working at the White House is the Presidential Records Act of 1978. It’s a law that basically means any record created in the course of official White House business must be preserved. You can learn more about the PRA in this post from September 2009, as well as WhiteHouse.gov’s privacy policy.
The White House has consulted with the nonpartisan experts of the National Archives and Records Administration to ensure we correctly archive presidential records created through the use of these websites and social media services.
For example, on Twitter, all tweets by White House accounts and any replies to official White House tweets are automatically archived through an RSS feed that is converted into email and preserved by the White House email archiving system. On our Facebook page, staff at the White House Office of Records management archive every wall post authored by the White House as well as a sampling of comments on the posts. These are saved in an organized folder structure using a standard file naming protocol.
These are just a couple of examples of the steps we take to comply with the PRA and preserve material for the future. We do not start using a new social network site until we have thought through how the PRA would apply to it and how we will archive any presidential records. (Figuring all of this out was one of the reasons we waited until May of 2009 to launch the White House pages on Facebook, Twitter, and MySpace.)
We are always looking for new opportunities to engage the public online, so if you know of any online communities or social media tools we should consider, please let us know.
