Obama Still Hearts YouTube

Tech Insider cited yesterday a report that the White House had dropped YouTube as its platform for Obama's weekly addresses. "After taking some heat from privacy advocates, the Obama administration has switched from using YouTube to post President Obama's weekly addresses to Vimeo."

But the Tech Daily Dose blog reported that's not quite right.

White House spokesman Nick Shapiro told Tech Daily Dose the uproar was unwarranted. He said the Web team simply tested a new way of presenting Obama's weekly address by using a player developed in-house. The decision is "more about better understanding our internal capabilities than it is a position on third-party solutions or a policy," he said.

The Dose also posted a link to a blog post by YouTube's Steve Grove, in which he wrote:

This past weekend, in presenting the President's most recent weekly Saturday address, the White House decided to use its own embedded player instead of the YouTube player on whitehouse.gov. One report stated that the White House had "ditched" YouTube.

That report is wrong. The White House decision does not mean that the White House has stopped using YouTube. The White House continues to post videos to its YouTube channel, as do other agencies like the U.S. Department of Education and the State Department. These channels are part of a broader effort within the General Services Administration (GSA) to help federal agencies communicate directly with citizens on YouTube.