A link to photos of the new First Family mistakenly leads to a gallery of Presidential pets
Change certainly came to Washington Tuesday, but
change.gov did not. President Obama's former transition Web site is now
defunct, with a note sending visitors to whitehouse.gov. The official
presidential Web address relaunched as a shiny social-media hub at
12:01 p.m.—even before Obama took his delayed oath into office.
Immediately,
the twitterati and tumblr set were abuzz over the site, noting how
similar it looked to the campaign's previous sites (with its twilight
blue background, Gotham font and a YouTube video highlighting the
president-elect's train journey this past weekend) and marveling at the
new chief executive's continued technological prowess. But it's worth
wondering how many of these observers had ever actually looked at
President Bush's site. It also had news updates (much like the blog on
Obama's White House site), an "Interactive White House," a
newsroom-like "Setting the Record Straight" feature, and slideshows—and
oh yes, that famous Barney cam.
So the real difference is that
the new site glosses with the buzzwords of social media and pristine
politics: transparency! Participation! RSS feed! All these look good on
paper (or, in this case, on screen) but delivering on the many promises
won't be easy—making the Web site a near-perfect metaphor for the
entire Obama presidency. The premier blog post, written by the director
of new media, Macon Phillips, introduces a framework full of features,
few of which are ready to use. Things that do work, like the
slideshows, are rife with bugs. Early Tuesday evening, Obama's new site
still referred to him as the president-elect in some places, and a link
to a gallery of first families shows you pictures of presidential pets.
"[Phillips's] first message was just about openness," says Rex Sorgatz,
an online media consultant who runs fimoculous.com. "But you can't just
crack open a wiki and say, 'Go at it.' Even forums or comments won't
produce anything meaningful. You need to have a filter in order for
productive discussions to rise to the top."
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