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The White House has Snapchat

White House

President Obama is already the most tech savvy president and has yet again added another social app to his resume, Snapchat. The White House official account went live January 11 with its first snap.

Snapchat

According to TechCrunch, The White House launched their account before Obama’s State of the Union address to give users a behind-the-scene look at the preparation leading up to the event. This included additional footage and camera angles. The account followed White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest through his rounds in the West Wing.

The White House is making the State of the Union address accessible and relatable to a younger generation. The speech has been available through YouTube for a couple years and this year it was available on Amazon for on-demand streaming.

The White House is no stranger to embracing social media, having already established a presence on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Vine and Instagram.

“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,” said White House’s director of product management Josh Miller. “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.”

While once known best as the “disappearing” messaging service, Snapchat has since developed a social platform for sharing content in a more authentic way. Snapchat’s Stories features is becoming one of the app’s go-to-draws, in which users will see all of the posts by the White House. These short-form, mobile-friendly media collections have grown over time to attract millions of users. Live Stores, for example, are capable of drawing in an audience of 20 million in 24 hours.

As for the new White House Snapchat account, the launch is a continuation of the company’s efforts at “meeting people where they are” – that is, on the social media platforms they use, said Miller.

For those who just want to see the president doing goofy things, that may not be coming just yet. But it won’t be all serious posts. The account has already been full of Sunny and Bo, the President’s dogs, lounging around on the lawn.

Check out the full article here: http://techcrunch.com/2016/01/11/the-white-house-joins-snapchat/.