President 2.0

We’ve been bombarded with articles, television and web coverage tied to the elections for months, but the most appropriate quote for our blog was in a CNN article yesterday and spoken by David Parry, assistant professor of emerging media at the University of Texas at Dallas. When interviewed for an article on the new Whitehouse.gov site, Parry said that the new site speaks to Obama’s awareness of the importance of Web 2.0 technology. Parry continued by saying, “I think it’s one of the key reasons he was elected, and now they are using it as a means to go to the people and communicate.”

Parry is right, yesterday at 12:01 the Whitehouse.gov site was rebranded with more interactive features, a photo gallery, the ability to sign up for email updates and a White House blog. This site will also host a weekly video address, slide shows and the latest news about nominations and appointments. There are other changes to the site too, behind these scenes the site has is more open to indexing allowing greater search. In addition to the site the White House Twitter was also refreshed and jumped from 4K followers to over 144K.

We’ve blogged about the role the web has played in the election – Obama’s Road to the Whitehouse, his fight to not Surrender your BlackBerry (which he’s won) and his use of the Change.gov site – but these were just teasers compared to the post inaugural technology and the changes we are likely to see.