Well, we know it’s important for businesses to be transparent online. This is one of the reasons often cited for running a corporate blog. It appears that President-Elect Barack Obama doesn’t see why the White House should be any different because according to the Washington Post, he is going to have his weekly democratic address recorded on video, and then uploaded online to be posted at Change.gov as well YouTube.
“This is just one of many ways that he will communicate directly with the American people and make the White House and the political process more transparent,” spokeswoman Jen Psaki told the Post.
If this doesn’t emphasize the impact of online video, I don’t know what does. It’s one thing for users to upload videos of Obama’s speeches. It’s another thing entirely for the Presidential administration to do so itself. Obama’s use of the Internet on the campaign trail was been covered heavily since the election, and it appears that his grasp on the importance of the Internet as a communication tool will continue right into his Presidency.
“Some people are already saying that posting to YouTube is just the strategy of the week for pandering to young people,” notes Marshall Kirkpatrick at ReadWriteWeb. “They point out that Obama’s account on Twitter, almost the most popular account on the service, has been dead silent since the election ended.” Personally, I’m glad that the President-Elect is staying busy enough to where he doesn’t have time to Twitter. Nothing against the service, but we’ve got some pretty major issues going on in the world, and to me it’s actually refreshing that Twittering isn’t high on his list of priorities.
When it comes to weekly addresses via YouTube though, it sounds good to me. It sounds like we’re going to have a President who truly wants to stay in touch with a nation consisting of people of all ages, and who embraces rising trends in technology and how people get their information.
Obama’s YouTube channel currently has 136,583 subscribers. It has over 19 and a half million views. Not bad for a couple years. Just think about when he actually takes office.
