The President of the United States gets an official Facebook Page

The Obama Administration has launched a Facebook page for the office of the Presidency. The page has already been verified by the social networking company and will center on the president’s wish to communicate directly with the public. President Obama’s first post included a video where he gave a quick tour of the White House backyard in order to address climate change.

Did you know that the White House grounds are a national park? Obama said that there’s a fox and a hawk roaming around. The point of his message? To make sure that the whole world can pass onto future generations the beauty of the world.

[aditude-amp id="flyingcarpet" targeting='{"env":"staging","page_type":"article","post_id":1836424,"post_type":"story","post_chan":"none","tags":null,"ai":false,"category":"none","all_categories":"social,","session":"A"}']

At publishing time, the POTUS Facebook Page had more than 12,000 people liking it.

Obama hasn’t been shy about participating in social media throughout his presidency, taking to Twitter, LinkedIn, Medium, Quora, and of course now Facebook. Yes, he’s been on social media before with his @BarackObama account, but that’s more for campaigning, and election laws prohibit mixing campaign and governance.

See more

The White House under Obama has shaped up to become one of the most technologically savvy in history. Not only does it have a slew of Silicon Valley executives serving in it — former Google exec Megan Smith serves as the U.S.’s chief technology officer and Twitter’s former general counsel Alex Macgillivray is her deputy; former Facebooker and Branch cofounder Josh Miller works within the administration on digital products — but it also has been looking at technology to see how it can better reach Americans and help solve our country’s problems.

With a little more than a year left in his second term in office, President Obama has been working to stem climate change around the world. In a victory for environmentalists, he rejected the controversial Keystone Pipeline extension and has laid out a proposal for how he wants to take action.

Because it’s a “POTUS” account, it’s likely that when Obama leaves office, the new president will receive the keys to the account to share whatever they want.