Barack Obama joins Google+


24 Nov 2011

US President Barack Obama on Google+

US President Barack Obama has joined Google+, which adds to his extensive social media presence as he prepares for the 2012 US presidential elections.

The Obama page was created yesterday, according to SearchEngineLand, and was welcomed by Steve Grove, head of community partnerships at Google+.

The page is the latest move for Obama as his campaign team prepares his social media strategy for the upcoming 2012 presidential elections.

He was praised during his last campaign for embracing the web and social networking platforms to gain support. Currently, his Twitter account has 11m followers and his Facebook account has more than 24m ‘Likes’.

Social networking has gained much more influence since the last US presidential elections in 2008 and many Republican presidential candidates running against him are also using these platforms.

In fact, while Obama’s Google+ page is a brand page, Republican nominees such as Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich are using profiles to promote themselves.

As social networking has become a much more widely used tool for marketing and communications, it seems that in these elections, candidates will be judged more on how they use these platforms rather than the fact they’re using them at all.