Got a letter for Obama? Message him on Facebook.
President Barack Obama is a bit of a night owl, known to spend the wee hours in the White House Treaty Room reading briefings, working on speeches, watching ESPN and eating almonds. And, according to the White House, Obama reads 10 letters sent to him by U.S. citizens every night.
“It has been a part of his daily routine since taking office in 2009,” White House chief digital officer Jason Goldman writes in a post for Medium.com. “These 10 ‘letters a day’ — or 10 LADs, as they’re known to staff — do more to keep the president in touch with what’s happening around the country than just about anything else.”
Until now, Goldman says, most of the letters chosen by the staff have been handwritten letters or emails sent through WhiteHouse.gov. But now those looking to send a note to Obama can reach him the same way your relatives reach you: by messaging him on Facebook.
“The White House’s Messenger bot,” Goldman boasts, “will make it as easy as messaging your closest friends.”
Well, not exactly. According to the administration, the White House receives tens of thousands of letters, faxes and emails each day.
But if yours is chosen, it will be read.
On June 13, for example, Obama read a letter from a Connecticut middle school teacher who reportedly asked him, “How can we allow private citizens to buy automatic weapons? They are weapons of war.”
And earlier this month, Obama shared a letter he received from Sherman Chester, a Florida man whose life sentence for a nonviolent drug offense was commuted by the president in December.
“I hope you’ll take a minute to read and share Sherman’s letter,” Obama wrote on Facebook. “The more we understand the human stories behind this problem, the sooner we can start making real changes that keep our streets safe, break the cycle of incarceration in this country, and save taxpayers like you money.”
The Facebook messaging initiative is part of the Obama administration’s push to keep pace with the world’s rapidly changing technology. In recent years, the White House has created official Twitter and Facebook profiles for the president, and Obama has participated in online town halls and Reddit AMAs. (In June, first lady Michelle Obama joined Snapchat.)
Even the president himself has begun to fully embrace the technological revolution: After using a BlackBerry for most of his two terms on the Oval Office, Obama told Jimmy Fallon that he recently switched to a smartphone — though it’s not exactly “smart.”
