You can now send a Facebook message to President Obama just as you would send a Facebook message to your friends.
The White House unveiled a Facebook Messenger bot Wednesday that allows users to send a note to the president online. Through the bot, citizens can share their thoughts with the administration as easily as they could message their close friends on Facebook.
“Our goal was to meet people where they are,” White House Chief Digital Officer Jason Goldman said in the announcement about the new Messenger bot. “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.”
This is not the first technological advance the White House has made in order to better connect the Obamas with the American people: The @POTUS Twitter account was launched in May 2015, while the First Lady joined Snapchat this past June.
To message the president, click on “Message” on the White House Facebook page, which will open the Messenger bot window. The bot mentions that the president will read 10 of these messages a night — a daily routine with handwritten letters that Obama implemented since taking office in 2009, and a presidential tradition that dates back to Thomas Jefferson. It is unclear if the Facebook messages will be in a category of their own for the President to read.
The White House's Messenger bot, the first of its kind for any government, joins more than 11,000 other Messenger chatbots on Facebook's platform.