White House joins Snapchat
The most social media-savvy U.S. president in history joined video messenger app Snapchat, but is not yet down with Peach.
After agencies took to social media in ways majestic, awkward and quite possibly illegal in 2015, President Barack Obama rang in the New Year by taking to Snapchat.
Promising "a behind-the-scenes glimpse of the administration," the first White House director of product management, Joshua Miller, touted the "WhiteHouse" Snapchat account in a Jan. 11 blog post.
"There are over 100 million daily active Snapchat users, and over 60 percent of American smartphone users between the ages of 13 and 34 use the platform," Miller wrote. "In light of the number of Americans who use the service to consume news and share with their friends, the White House is joining Snapchat to engage this broad cross-section of the population in new and creative ways."
The app, which is popular with teens for its disappearing photo function, will feature State of the Union preparations on Jan. 12, Miller said.
Snapchat might be a powerful engagement tool, but the president could still be playing catch-up in the Internet relevance race. Reporters on Twitter were abuzz about the new social media app Peach in the days before Obama's Snapchat announcement.