Social networking with the White House
Updated on 05 May 2009
Felicity Spector looks at the Flickr feeds, Facebook pages and Twitter tweets from this most techno-savvy White House.
White House aides lining up for pizza in the Roosevelt room, the Obamas kicking back to watch the game, sporting ridiculous 3-D specs, all backstage during the President's press briefing.
It's all very West Wing, except this time you can see the real thing thanks to the new White House Flickr feed which churns out dozens of images a day.
And there's more. This most techno-savvy of White Houses has opened its own Twitter feed. A quick viewing reveals the latest exciting news that the Centre for Disease Control has a new swine flu leaflet, and there's a chance to link to the President's remarks about Justice Souter.
Naturally there are also dedicated pages on Myspace and Facebook. Talk about friends in high places.
Inevitably, there are already concerns about what would it mean for privacy if the US Government can access all kinds of information from someone's personal Facebook profile, not to mention the opportunity to browse through all your embarrassing office party snaps. But that didn't stop tens of thousands of people signing up as friends hours after the pages first went live.
The administration prefers to call the new initiatives 'White House 2.0' and Obama says they're now planning to invite people to take part in a forum on reforming government for the 21st Century "so that we're also guided by voices that come from outside of Washington". As long as they use 125 characters or less, of course.
In the meantime the Flickr feed has already run into trouble after eagle eyed viewers spotted what looked like a secret CIA document in clear view. The photograph showed Obama and six top advisors in the Red Room getting ready for a news conference, and an enlarged image of a folder in the hands of foreign policy advisor Denis McDonough shows the words CIA, with 'secret' written underneath.
Not that you can see much else and the White House clearly wasn't worried, as seen in this email from spokesman Bill Burton: "Uh oh. Please don't tell me that the enemy is now going to know what our fax coversheets look like. (That is indeed what it is.)"
However if you want to scrutinise the picture for yourself, you can't. The White House took it down. Amuse yourself with the pizza shot, instead.
