WASHINGTON D.C., U.S. President Barack Obama. (Xinhua/Yin Bogu/IANS)
Washington, Aug 11 (IANS) Want to convey your message to US President Barack Obama? Here is your chance online. The White House has announced that people can now send Obama a note via Facebook Messenger the same way they message their friends.
To send him a note, go to Facebook.com/WhiteHouse or find the White House on the Messenger app to start a thread with the President's new chat bot. Enter your message and confirm the text.
"Our goal is to meet people where they are. It's why the President launched his own Twitter account and the First Lady is on Snapchat. It's about creating opportunities for people to engage with their government in new and accessible ways, using the same technologies we already rely on in our daily lives," said Jason Goldman, Chief Digital Officer of the White House.
Every night, President Obama reads 10 letters that were sent to him by citizens. It has been a part of his daily routine since assuming office in 2009.
"These 10 'letters a day' or 10 LADs, as they're known to staff, do more to keep the President in touch with what's happening around the country than just about anything else," Goldman added in a statement on Friday.
"For the greater part of our nation's history, the only way to get a message to the President and the White House was to send it by mail," he posted.
Technology made new ways of communicating possible.
In the 1880s, the White House began receiving phone calls.
In 1994, WhiteHouse.gov introduced a way for the public to submit messages online.
According to Obama, "What's interesting is not only do these letters help me to stay in touch with the people who sent me here, or the people who voted against me, but a lot of times they identify problems that might not have percolated up through the various agencies and bureaucracies."
