White House Embracing Digital Platforms For State Of The Union Address
(CBS) -- While many will watch the President Barack Obama's State of the Union address on TV, not everyone uses that method of viewing content. For younger generations who spend their time on computers and phones and tablets, the president has a plan for them too.
CBS 2's Marissa Bailey reports in his final State of the Union address, President Obama is taking it up a notch when it comes to social media. The White House is now on a platform called "genius" with the goal to reach Americans of all ages.
With just hours to go before his final state of the union address, President Obama wants to speak directly to Americans and he'll be doing it on almost every social media platform available.
"I think that they realized there's a huge opportunity to reach young Americans in a very compelling visual way," said Tracy Samantha Schmidt of Socially Authentic.
And according to the White House, that's the goal: to talk to Americans who may not be sitting in front of a television at 8 p.m. Central Time.
This year's State of the Union will be broadcast on Youtube and Amazon video, with updates and behind the scenes posts on Twitter, Instagram, Vine and for the first time Snapchat.
"They thought well we've got all these great videos - we've got all these great photographs how do we make it more relevant to young Americans and I think Snapchat is the ideal way to do that," said Schmidt.
Also new this year the online annotation platform known as "Genius" where people can find past speeches, with insight and pictures from other White House officials.
"The challenge with social mediums, specifically Twitter is that it's hard to share context so a platform like Genius is going to be able to do that very easy," Schmidt said.
The hashtag for tonight is #SOTU for all things State of the Union.
Schmidt says if you want to watch the State of the Union live and with your phone or tablet nearby, choose a few people to follow to narrow the information you're receiving.
You can watch the State of the Union address live on CBSChicago.com.
