Durham start-up creates Obama's presidential social media archive
DURHAM, North Carolina (WTVD) -- You might have heard of presidential libraries, but now a local company is working with the White House to create a social media archive for our 44th president as he leaves office.
President Obama's tweets will still be saved under the handle "@POTUS44" as he gets ready to turn over the "@POTUS" handle to president elect Donald Trump. But the National Archives wants to make sure all social media under his administration is protected and stored.
Barack Obama is the first ever U.S. president to have any kind of presidential social media account, and Durham-based company Archive Social is working with the White House to preserve that record and make it public.
"Being the first social media president, he's been able to reach and communicate with citizens in a way that a president has never been able to before," Anil Chawla, CEO of Archive Social, said. "Transparency, accessibility to our leaders, that's what we all crave as citizens."
"If you look ahead at the president-elect, you can see how important twitter has been," he added.
Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest - the tech start-up has backed up all social media created by President Barack Obama, the first lady, and his administration, into one site.
Check out "The Obama White House - Social Media Archive" here.
While there is no plan to delete any of the president's old posts, Archive Social said their site puts all that content in one place, makes it searchable and acts as a fail safe.
"The bigger issue is that when you think about long-term transparency, there are no guarantees about that data. There is no guarantee about the social network being there or making changes," Chawla said.
The company serves multiple cities and counties across the Triangle, and others like Chicago, Dallas, and even the US Department of Justice, to create a record of info that could otherwise disappear.
"A lot of times what we've seen with our customers is that crime tips might come in your social channels these days, but a citizen at any point can then delete that Twitter direct message or that Facebook message and a public law enforcement agency can then lose an important record that's critical," Chawla said.
And their newest project is something they're very proud of indeed.
"It's obviously an honor for a small company out of Durham to have this opportunity work with the greatest office in the world," Chawla said.
