President Obama

Last night President Obama shared his State of the Union address and is now giving the American public their chance to chime in by taking questions on Jan. 30 at 5:30 p.m. EST in the first ever White House Google+ Hangout.

Through Jan. 28 at midnight EST, submit your own questions on the state of the nation to the White House YouTube page and vote on those you find most important for the president to answer. Several people who submit questions will be selected to join the video Hangout and interact with the president live. Since only 10 attendees are able to participate directly in the Hangout, the rest of us will just be watching the 45-minute live video feed of the president discussing the top-rated questions from the public.

The official Google+ White House page is the president's latest push in an integrated social media presence as his staffers also recently set up an Instagram account (@barackobama) in preparation for the 2012 campaign.

Source: The White House Flickr

Last night at 8:35 p.m. PST, President Obama announced that Osama bin Laden had been killed by a military operation on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. But by the time his speech had started, the news of bin Laden's death had already spread around Twitter and Facebook. While social media is a great way to keep in touch with family and friends, it's quickly becoming my favorite place to check up on breaking news. How has social media changed the way news is reported? Check out a few examples of how this breaking story unfolded below.

• Twitter — White House communications director Dan Pfeiffer announced on Twitter that the POTUS would be making a speech at 7:30 p.m. PST, but the first tweet about bin Laden's death came from a former chief-of-staff for Donald Rumsfeld. Twitter explosion ensues.
• Push notifications — If you have installed any news apps on your smartphones (like AP Mobile for example), you'd get quick and timely breaking news pop-ups. I got my first notification about the news shortly after the first tweet about bin Laden's death hit the Internet. I then went straight to my trending topics on Twitter to get more information.
• Text messaging — News spreads quickly online and within social networks thanks to text messaging. Texting has been growing in popularity among all age groups, and is sometimes the preferred choice of communication over phone calls and emails.
• Facebook — A group called Osama Bin Laden is Dead pops up on Facebook, and within minutes, starts collecting hundreds of fans. As more people "like" the page, the quicker the news spreads through friends.
• Live news feeds online — President Obama addressed the nation via traditional media outlets like TV and radio, as well as on Ustream. It also had embedded video on its official webpage, and on the White House Live Facebook page. Additionally, White House staffers were live tweeting key quotes during the speech on Twitter.

How has social media changed the way you consume news? Where did you first read about Osama bin Laden's death?

Rock stars and even former presidents have taken to Facebook to connect with the masses, but never before has an acting president appeared live on Facebook. Until now! President Obama will appear live on Facebook Wednesday, April 20 at 1:45 PDT (4:45 EDT).

CEO Mark Zuckerberg and COO Sheryl Sandberg will sit down with the president, who plans to discuss current economic conditions and "tough choices we must all make in order to put our economy on a more responsible fiscal path."

Facebook will be selecting user-posted questions to include in the interview. To submit your question, post it on the event's Facebook wall, or more privately via the White House's official site.

Don't let the headline fool you — our gadget-loving president, Barack Obama, hasn't tossed his beloved BlackBerry aside for Apple products, but he is dabbling in iOS.

In a recent interview, the POTUS admitted that he was still (literally) attached at the hip with his BlackBerry, but he's also got his own iPad. It's not clear if the president was able to score a sold-out iPad 2 or if he's rocking a first-gen tablet, but he did say that he's able to tether it to his BlackBerry. Maybe Steve Jobs gave him a new one during their recent meet and greet in Silicon Valley?

Either way, the president is fully operational with a BlackBerry, an iPad, and his own computer.

It seems that NBC Bay Area has gotten its hands on what appears to be an official guest list for tonight's Silicon Valley dinner with President Obama.

As you may have already heard, the POTUS will be landing in the Bay Area tonight for a tech meet-up of his own; already-confirmed guests include Mark Zuckerberg, Steve Jobs, and Eric Schmidt. However, the dinner table will be packed with other tech CEOs and bigwigs.

See the rumored full guest list just after the break.

After news that the Obama administration announced a new National Internet ID initiative, the general Internet quickly rallied against it. The name itself sounds sort of like something handed down by a Communist regime, but the administration has been quick to point out that the implication of such a strategy would in no way begin a slippery slope of regulation and big brother-esque monitoring. In fact, its purpose is not to monitor online activity — its purpose is to aid US consumers in creating a central identity for use on the Internet. But what exactly would this accomplish?

When it comes to worrying about online security, your opinions are split. But given the recent popularity of online privacy in the news from companies like Google and Facebook, it's possible the government could come up with a plausible solution.The initiative is aimed at increasing cybersecurity and gives authority to the U.S. Commerce Department — not the Department of Homeland Security or the National Security Agency, reinforcing that this security measure is aimed to protect US consumers and is not considered a national security measure or tracking system of any kind. Find out what you should expect, and when to expect it, after the break.