Social Media Tipping Point

I believe today we reached a tipping point in social media. What’s a tipping point? According to Malcolm Gladwell, author of The Tipping Point, a tipping point is that magic moment when an idea, trend, or social behavior crosses a threshold, tips, and spreads like wildfire.

Why do I believe this and why today? We’ve been building up to this point for the past year. Twitter has been growing at an incredible rate and Facebook is one of the most popoular websites on the Internet. But, today the White House (yes, THAT White House) launched WhiteHouse 2.0. That’s right. The seat of power of arguably the most powerful nation in the world has embraced social media wholeheartedly and without reservation.

The announcement was made on the whitehouse.gov blog, which has been active since January. The blog post states:

In the President’s last Weekly Address, he called on government to “recognize that we cannot meet the challenges of today with old habits and stale thinking.” He added that “we need to reform our government so that it is more efficient, more transparent, and more creative,” and pledged to “reach beyond the halls of government” to engage the public. Today the White House is taking steps to expand how the Administration is communicating with the public…

Indeed they have. Today they launched a new Facebook page, MySpace page, and Twitter account, in addition to their blog active since January, a Flickr photostream active the past few days, Vimeo channel active since December, YouTube channel active since January, and iTunes podcast channel also active since January. As of the writing of this post, @whitehouse has more than 20,000 followers on Twitter. That in ONE DAY! Wow.

In direct counterpoint to the previous administration, the Obama White House has made it a major objective to be as open and informative as possible. Social media is obviously a major part of that goal.

But, do you see why I think we’ve reached a tipping point. The U.S. government is the largest organization in the world and doesn’t make changes quickly or easily. If the leader of the free world has embraced the social media sphere, the rest of the country and the world can’t be far behind.

It’s the dawn of a new era, and I’m just glad that I’m in the thick of things. Are you?

Tags: communications, president obama, Social Media, white house, whitehouse.gov