White House is now on twitter, Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, Vimeo…

In a similar way Obama transformed political campaigns, he is now transforming the White House. Today, the administration announced on its blog that the White House is now on Facebook, MySpace and Twitter. Within minutes, thousands of people joined these new profiles. When I learned about it and joined Facebook fan page of the White House, I was 480th member. Now as I am writing this post (just one hour later), there are more than 32,000 fans. And those are not the only sites the President is using the spread his message. You can also find him on: Vimeo, YouTube, iTunes and Flickr.

Before the arrival of Obama to the White House, the President didn’t even send emails, and now he is on several social media sites. It will be interesting to see how he will be using them. These channels can help Obama spread his message, influence people and pressure legislators through their own constituents. They can also prove invaluable during an emergency, allowing the White House to reach directly and instantly millions of people (for example about the swine flu).

The one thing that is unclear is how much these websites will be used for two-way communication. So far, for example, @WhiteHouse Twitter account shows that the White House is following only three people, the Facebook account is only showing blog posts from the White House page and MySpace is also only re-purposing content already available on whitehouse.gov. That said, it is a good start and it is great to see so many people interested in government.