Skip to main content

Obama to take questions via YouTube, answer them online


Wednesday, January 27, 2010
WASHINGTON: President Barack Obama will take questions from the public via YouTube about his "State of the Union" speech on Wednesday and answer them online next week, the White House said.

White House "New Media" director Macon Phillips said in a post on the White House blog that questions can be submitted at /CitizenTube after the 9:00 pm (0200 GMT Thursday) address to Congress begins.

"From our live webstream to a free iPhone app, the White House is using technology to make sure the president's State of the Union address reaches as many people as possible," Phillips said.

"Now we are excited to announce how President Obama will also be using the Web to offer the public a direct and participatory way to communicate back to him," he said.

Phillips said the YouTube questions will be answered by Obama next week "in a special online event, live from the White House."

Obama relied heavily on the Internet during his presidential campaign for organizing, fundraising and communicating and has created MySpace and Facebook pages and a Twitter feed since entering the White House.

Obama's "New Media" team has also launched a channel on Google-owned YouTube and the White House is present on photo-sharing site Flickr.

Last week, the White House unveiled a free application for the Apple iPhone which features live video streaming of presidential events.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

India's swine flu death rate is increasing

Friday, August 14, 2009 MUMBAI: A 26-year-old woman died Thursday of H1N1 swine flu in the southern city of Bangalore, raising India's death toll from the virus to 20, authorities said.The death was the first reported in India's information technology capital, the Press Trust of India reported.Meanwhile in Pune, the worst-affected in India, two more victims of the virus died Thursday, raising the death toll in that western city near Mumbai to 12, the report said. The victims were an 11-month-old boy and a 75-year-old old woman.US media reported movie halls, schools and colleges were ordered closed Thursday for three days to a week in Mumbai, the commercial and financial capital of the country, as fear of the pandemic spread.Prajakata Lavangare, a spokeswoman for the government of Maharashtra state of which Mumbai is the capital, said similar orders were issued in Pune, which is also located in the state.The woman who died in Bangalore was identified only as Roopa, a teacher in...

Snake bite deaths

Monday, July 06, 2009 COLOMBO: The Sri Lankan government recorded some 33,000 snake bites in 2008, with most of the victims coming from remote villages.The Department of Government Information said in a statement that most of the snake bite cases could be fatal if neglected.The statement said snake bites are often neglected in Sri Lanka as victims do not seek treatment at hospitals where advanced medication is available. Instead, the victims rush to traditional type of treatment which could be a risk, reports Xinhua.Snake bites death at domestic level, outside hospitals, go unrecorded, said the statement.Most victims of snake bite are from the rural and remote villages where there is no electricity after dusk.Statistics show that Sri Lanka has over 90 species of snake with around 10 species possessing venom capable of killing a human being.In Sri Lanka the annual death rate due to snake bite envenoming is one of the highest in the world being 6 in 100,000 population.