Obama to Broadcast Himself via YouTube

While Al Gore may have invented the Internet, President-elect Barack Obama intends to make full use of it.

The election of Barack Obama already signals a tide of firsts for the United States. One such tool from Web 2.0 that the President-elect intends to use is YouTube to help deliver the weekly Democratic address – which traditionally is broadcast by radio.

"The Obama team has written the playbook on how to use YouTube for political campaigns. Not only have they achieved impressive mass — uploading over 1800 videos that have been viewed over 110 million times total — but they’ve also used video to cultivate a sense of community amongst supporters," Steve Grove, head of news and politics at YouTube, said to the Washington Post. "Obama told us in a YouTube interview last year that he plans to have ’fireside chats’ on video, and we expect his administration will launch a White House YouTube channel very soon after taking office."

According to officials, the goal of utilizing the new tools of the Internet is to help put a face to the government, and to hopefully better connect to the nation’s citizens.

"This is just one of many ways that he will communicate directly with the American people and make the White House and the political process more transparent," spokeswoman Jen Psaki told the Post.

Obama clearly has his eyes on technology, no more evident than his intention to appoint the nation’s first White House Chief Technology Officer (which won’t be Google CEO Eric Schmidt). Obama even took things to consumer electronics with his iPhone application and in-game advertisements in the Burnout Paradise.