He has aired his press conferences via YouTube, shared fascinating moments of life in the White House via Flickr, and is using Twitter to keep people informed of what's going on. Now he's trying a completely novel mobile approach to share a speech on bridging the gap between the U.S. and the Muslim world. He will deliver it in Cairo, Egypt tomorrow.
The ambitious plan goes beyond posting messages on Facebook and other social media sites - things he already does. The State Department project intends to utilize a mobile system to send highlights of Obama's speech live via SMS to anyone who registers for them on America.gov.
Anybody with a cell phone can register for SMS updates of the speech, no matter the nation in which they reside. One of the goals of the innovative project, according to Press Secretary Robert Gibbs, is a broad effort to reach people internationally.
On top of the SMS speech highlights, users can add to the conversation by texting back. The State Department will post a swath of user-submitted comments on a separate web page. This is an attempt to engage the global community on a scale we have never seen tried with mobile phones.
Because this is an international effort, texts can be received in Arabic, Persian, Urdu and English. On top of that, a full transcript of the speech will be posted in 13 languages via Twitter, Facebook, and MySpace.
The Obama Administration is taking special care to make sure that this speech reaches as many citizens of the Muslim world as humanly possible. While social networking will be one of their tools, the focus is on the SMS, making sure that anyone with a phone can get the speech, even if it's not made available to them via television or the Internet.
It's also a unique attempt to circumvent censorship and directly reach the individual. And as we were reminded recently by China blocking Twitter, censorship is still prevalent in many parts of the world. If you're a citizen of a nation with these problems, this may be the best way to get information directly from the source.