Hey - it's a brand spanking new White House website

In '03, we launched "Ask the White House," which allowed people to chat with members of the White House, cabinet secretaries, and other members of the administration.

The most popular chats? The White House chef, the White House gardener, the White House curator, and whenever we hosted someone to talk about ghosts in the White House.

Don't get me wrong, we had plenty of policy discussions. Policy discussions outnumbered human interest chats by at least 20 to 1 and back then we averaged four or five chats a week. But it was the human interest stuff that people loved.

Video "Ask the White House"?

Our prediction is that we'll see a video version of "Ask the White House" where President Obama answers questions from the public, similar to what Governor Schwarzenegger used to do on his site (Another full disclosure: I was the director of that site as well).

We used to see Obama's campaign manager on YouTube all the time talking in layman's language about what the campaign was doing and how it affected the public.

Keep it up, David

David Plouffe's videos were great. He made you feel like you were part of the campaign -- like you understood what they were doing. And he did it from his webcam. He didn't go to a studio and make a formal presentation. He just talked like a guy.

If they continue to do this (and why wouldn't they), they will continue to connect with average Americans.

This type of communication is what's needed -- whether you voted for Obama or not. It's about bringing the president and his staff to the American people.

The press briefings are one thing. But the model Plouffe followed with his informal webcam discussions will do wonders for the connecting with people.

Although Plouffe has apparently decided not to join the Obama White House (he's writing a book), we look forward to the Obama presidential team following Plouffe's lead.

Importance of interactivity

We were very pleased to see Phillips mention the importance of interactivity in his first blog.

"Citizen participation will be a priority for the Administration, and the Internet will play an important role in that," he wrote. "One significant addition to WhiteHouse.gov reflects a campaign promise from the President: we will publish all non-emergency legislation to the website for five days, and allow the public to review and comment before the President signs it."

One question though: Will they allow comments on the blog?

First Dog

Oh yeah, the First Dog.

Whenever we talked about Barney on the White House site, traffic soared. We can only imagine once President Obama gets his new dog -- page views will go through the roof.

We think a video camera on Vice President Joe Biden's head, however, would be a wonderful holiday video.

Two thumbs up

Overall, I think the site is a solid first start. If anything, it will be fun watching what this team can pull off. They will certainly face some of the same frustrations that we did. For example, they were just told there will be no Instant Messaging in the White House.

But again, they showed they know how to harness technology to interact and mobilize people during the campaign. It will be fun watching them as the site evolves.

By the way, to see how the design of Whitehouse.gov has evolved over the years, go here to the waybackmachine.

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