Perhaps taking a cue from The Jonas Brothers (or more likely the CNN Live Inauguration), The White House broadcast the event live on Facebook, while also providing a chat-like environment where users could post messages. Those messages in turn become status updates that are broadcast to your friends.
The White House bills the move as being all about citizen involvement, writing on their blog that “an aide from the White House Office of Health Reform will also be keeping track of the chat and letting the participants in the meeting know what people are talking about.”
However, like the other events that utilize this style of chat (which is similar to our recently launched Mashable Lounge, except it uses Twitter sign-in), there’s also a big viral benefit as users see their friends talking about the currently hot political issue of healthcare. How big of a benefit that is comes down to whether or not users support or oppose the policies that the administration is proposing, as sentiment could snowball one way or another based on the nature of the status updates being posted out of the chat.
In any event, The White House notes that we can expect “similar events in the future,” and no matter which side of the issues you fall on, we certainly think that’s a good thing.