While study after study shows that more adults are using social media networks, there may not be better evidence of that than the fact that the President of the United States is planning a town hall using LinkedIn.
While Facebook is the undisputed king of the social networking community, LinkedIn has long tried to be the go-to site for professionals. LinkedIn may not offer all the bells and whistles that Facebook does on their pages but the professional networking site has worked out a nice little niche for itself.
Earlier this fall it was revealed that LinkedIn was starting to get real notice as a social networking tool. The popular location app Sonar, added LinkedIn to its list of social networking sites that would show when contacts were in the same location as other users. With President Barack Obama announcing that he will be using the site, LinkedIn looks to only be adding to its street cred among social users.
The White House announced that President Obama will be in the San Francisco bay area city of Mountain View next Monday. While there, he will host a town hall style online question and answer session. The President will answer questions that are posted on the White House LinkedIn page set up for the session.
President Obama will actually answer the questions using live video that will be streamed both on LinkedIn and at the White House’s personal website. According to White House officials, have already begun accepting questions and will start going through the best ones to talk about.
This particular town hall is an even more obvious sign that social networkers are taking LinkedIn more serious lately. President Obama is no stranger to getting his message out using social networks. The White House has previously held these kinds of town halls on both Twitter and Facebook.
The timing of having this town hall on LinkedIn is not a coincidence. The President has been pushing his new jobs plan hard over the last few weeks. The White House clearly feels that using the professional networking site to have this particular conversation will underline his focus on the jobs issue this fall.
Edited by
Jennifer Russell
