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From John Murrell, via the Interesting People mailing list,
The change anticipated for so long by so many came quickly, just after noon in Washington. After centuries of struggle and halting progress, the nation was finally able to welcome … its first White House new media director. He is Macon Phillips, formerly with Blue State Digital, and he is the first to post in a new White House blog, one of the features of the instantly remodeled presidential site, whitehouse.gov.
The site will include a blog, with RSS feed, email updates, text of executive orders and proclamations, and policy positions. Most of this has been around in one form or another. But making good on a campaign promise, “We will publish all non-emergency legislation to the website for five days, and allow the public to review and comment before the President signs it,” according to Phillips.
Phillips claims that the site is a work in progress, and invites suggestions from the public,
and the never-shy tech crowd quickly stepped up, lobbying for a better way to handle public comments than a corporate-style “contact us” form limited to 500 characters.
Does anyone know about any statistics on net traffic, during the Inauguration. I monitored and made a few comments on Twitter, but couldn’t get Facebook to respond.
Update:
Here are some stats from Mashable:
http://mashable.com/2009/01/20/cnn-facebook-inauguration-numbers/
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Social media actually being used in helpful government applications is one of those things that I’ve always dismissed as a nice fantasy, a pipe dream. The idea of the government coming up with innovative ways to use technology is pretty exciting.
According to this site (http://www.thrfeed.com/2009/01/obama-inauguration-online-traffic-.html) the inauguration was fifth highest traffic ever. First was election day, 2008.
I was taken by the new site because it seems to take itself seriously as a learning place. Since the White House should be expert about a few things (the presidents themselves and the White House itself) I see that it has big links to both those items. Watching Obama ban Gitmo and lobbying activity for the executive branch, I continue to be struck by how his community organizing history and social networking tools seem to dovetail in his mind. I can’t wait for the first time Obama calls on us to help him with a legislative agenda. It will be sweet to watch.
Speaking of the White House and communication, has anyone taken a look at the new Education agenda link from the White House home page? I know a good many of you readers are teachers. What are your impressions? The first paragraph begins “President Obama and Vice President Biden believe that our kids and our country can’t afford four more years of neglect and indifference.” Here’s the link: http://www.whitehouse.gov/agenda/education/