White House links up on Twitter, Facebook, MySpace

President Barack Obama’s administration linked the official White House web site to various social sites like Twitter, Facebook and MySpace.

During his campaign for president, Obama had already shown himself to be attuned to new media like YouTube, and he took steps to continue use of a personal mobile device — specially secured — after being elected.

This move also gives ordinary people more ways to communicate with the White House through comments on the administration’s Facebook page. Some analysts mused that because the comments left on the Facebook page don’t appear directly on whitehouse.gov, the administration still maintains some protective distance from them.

“Because it’s not the White House’s site,” wrote blogger David Weinberger, any “trashy” or racist comments won’t appear on the official government site.

Twitter, based in San Francisco, is a “micro-blogging” service, and within a short time of joining the service on Friday, the White House already had thousands of followers.

Facebook, based in Palo Alto, started as a web site for college students. MySpace, based in Santa Monica, is now owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. link...