While we may be forced to part with Barack Obama’s presidency over the United States, we’ll never say goodbye to his tweets. According to Digital Trends, the White House teamed up with Giphy, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and various organizations and companies to archive the Obama administration’s social media presence.
That’s right – wipe your tears because thanks to a “social media archiving platform,” [created by software company ArchiveSocial] we have access to upwards of 250,000 online posts shared by President Obama, the White House, and First Lady Michelle Obama. You can even peruse the archive using keywords or the advanced search tab to see posts from individual social platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Twitter, Google Plus, and Flickr.
Obama was the first president to embrace social media, with his administration creating 100 official White House social media profiles. In addition, he was also the most GIF-able president (thus far) in history, which prompted the White House and Giphy to partner together to create a page on Giphy’s site dedicated to every GIF the Obama administration shared.
The social data doesn’t stop there – the MIT Lab’s Electome group is also creating a tool with programmer Derek Lieu that compares and analyzes tweets from the White House with tweets from the public. Some findings include that 22% of tweets from the @POTUS account shed light on gun issues, while 40% of tweets from the @FLOTUS account were about veterans.
“That’s nice, but how can I relive Obama’s presidency on social media in real time?” I’m so glad you asked, kind reader. The White House is partnering with studio Feel Train to create a Twitter bot (@Relive44) that will retweet some of the administration’s tweets over the course of the next eight years. Now you can spend the better part of the next decade pretending he’s still your president.
