Whitehouse.gov

One thing I am very curious about: the website for the Obama White House.

The White House’s official website, Whitehouse.gov, was launched in October 1994 under the Clinton administration. It looked like this. Over the years it changed to this, then this, then this; here is how it looked at the end of the Clinton presidency.

Around noon on January 20, 2001, the first Whitehouse.gov transition occurred. The Bush administration’s first website looked like this — pretty crappy, even for 2001. Here are a couple of articles about it. Eventually it improved.

But today, at noon or sometime thereafter, the keys to the website will pass the new administration. Will it have a blog? A Flickr feed? A YouTube channel? Some secret new technology invented by Google that will be introduced to the world today?

We’ll soon find out.

3 thoughts on “Whitehouse.gov

  1. This reminds me of watching Bob Dole spell out his Web address at a 1996 debate. That’s a pretty awful Web site Bush had in 2001. I love how the look of the change.gov site was applied to whitehouse.gov right at noon.

  2. The Guardian reflects an fairly sophisticated digital & web-based strategy of the Obama Administration:

    “…[they] sent brief messages to cell phones during a day when all of Washington was buried under a crush of visitors and security.

    “If you are still in transit to the Mall, we suggest you head west of 14th Street,” aides advised Tuesday morning as officials coped with crowds heading toward the inauguration ceremonies on the west steps of the Capitol.

    …and…

    “WhiteHouse.gov is just the beginning of the new administration’s efforts to expand and deepen this online engagement…”

    Here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/feedarticle/8300590

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