We’re well aware of the social media habits of president-elect Donald Trump, and foresee interesting times ahead as he uses Twitter to control his message and so forth. But for those already longing for a less antagonistic presidential presence online, the Obama administration’s extensive archive of tweets and Facebook posts and more are now totally searchable.
The White House, in partnership with ArchiveSocial, announced on Thursday that an archive of eight years of Obama social postings have been made available online. The database contains more than 250,000 posts, photos and videos shared by more than 100 official Obama White House social media profiles including the president’s @POTUS Twitter timeline, the official White House Facebook page, and the First Lady’s Instagram feed.
The desire to preserve and pass on the digital history of the Obama administration was part of a transition plan put in place months ago by what The White House labels the first “social media president.”
According to ArchiveSocial, based in Durham, N.C., “the archive provides the general public with long-term access to high-fidelity records of the social media content generated by the Obama administration, regardless of changes that may occur on the original social networking platforms over time. It features advanced search functionality, high resolution photo and video replay, and authentic social media records with complete technical metadata.”
One sample search term on the archive home page is “Bo OR Sunny” and sure enough, more than 1,100 results come up related to posts about the Obama’s dogs. Clicking on one such link gave the option to further click back to Instagram, for a photo on the account of official White House photographer Pete Souza:
“Social media has been a key tool for the Obama Administration to communicate with American citizens and people around the world, and ArchiveSocial is proud to play a part in preserving the legacy of the first ‘social media president’,” said Anil Chawla, CEO of ArchiveSocial, in a news release. Through the Obama White House Social Media Archive, this commitment to transparency and engagement will be preserved long after the Obama presidency ends.”
The archive is updated through Dec. 31, 2016, and posts that are made up until Jan. 20 and the inauguration of Trump will be added.
