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Amidst all the Iowa noise from last night and today's announcement about the end of Michele Bachmann's presidential bid, something else happened: President Obama quietly joined social photo sharing app Instagram. Obama joined with the username @barackobama and has since posted two photos. The first one is of him speaking via videoconference to Iowa caucus-goers. The second is a photo of people watching the videoconference and is captioned "You guys inspire me every single day."

This is yet another instance of the president using social media to reach and engage with the younger demographic that helped him get elected four years ago. With the GOP edging in on social media, however, will this same strategy help him win in 2012?

The President of the United States has just joined Google+. Well, sort of. This new page is actually a Google+ brand page for the Obama For America 2012 campaign. Republican presidential nominees Herman Cain, Mitt Romney, Rick Perry, Newt Gingrich and Ron Paul had already joined Google+, and while none of them are doing anything spectacular, they did join.

There is one politician that Obama could learn a few things from: Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) has been using Google+ since July 14, 2011, and his presence is frank and personal. Viral videos of Bernie Sanders spread like wildfire across the Internet, especially in progressive politics circles.

The fact that Obama waited until just today to join Google+ and launched as a brand instead of a person is troubling, and further solidifies the idea that he is just that - a brand. So now that Barack's on Google+, will he actually hangout?

President Barack Obama and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg sat down at Facebook headquarters this afternoon to have a townhall meeting that was streamed live to the Web.

Via Facebook Live and Livestream, Obama answered questions from Zuckerberg, the crowd and participants across the Web. Even though Obama was sitting on stage at the quintessential Web 2.0 corporation, not much of the conversation veered towards technology.

Questions included the national debt, the budget, the economic recovery, the Dream Act (Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors), immigration, Medicare and Medicaid and education. For a while it sounded more like an "Obama For Re-Election in 2012" campaign stop than it did a conversation with one of the leaders of the Internet industry.

The U.S. government is finally catching on to the growing trend that - surprise, surprise - people like to use their mobile devices to access the Internet. The only problem is, of course that America's mobile infrastructure is years behind that of other regions around the world, while rapid device innovation is quickly crowding the available spectrum. Today, President Barack Obama issued a presidential memorandum aimed at addressing this issue - making more spectrum available for government and commercial use.

In the recent months, entrepreneurship has been a hot topic in Washington. From the proposed Startup Visa, to Senator Dodd's financial reform strategies and even to the overall need for more job creation - many agree that entrepreneurship will play a large role in turning this country's economic woes around. But one group in support of entrepreneurship is asking for something a little different from the President: a national holiday.

Barack Obama's rise to fame in the years leading up to the 2008 presidential election caused many to compare the young Illinois senator to John F. Kennedy. Like Kennedy, Obama mobilized an enormous following across age and racial boundaries with his charismatic and inspirational speeches about a hope for a brighter future. But according to New York Times contributor and multi-Pulitzer Prize winning author Thomas Friedman, while Kennedy continued to inspire after his eventual election, Obama has not.

Twitter just announced its new home page redesign complete with trending topics and search. Publicly launched at the 2006 South by South West interactive festival, users first flocked to the site as a way to communicate with friends and festival attendees. However, as we've seen in the past few years, the site has evolved into a multifaceted real-time tool. The community has given timely updates on earthquakes, the Iran election and we've even seen professional poker players bluff in real-time Tweets. Twitter has evolved into a community where users can discover breaking news and trends and the new home page certainly matches that.

Everyone knows how well Barack Obama's presidential campaign made use of new media to raise money and market the candidate. We also know how big a role social technology played during inauguration week, from handheld flip HD footage appearing on network TV to people reporting on Twitter about what they liked and disliked. After President Obama took office, spirited debates proliferated in the blogosphere about whether or not whitehouse.gov is Web 2.0-enabled and what the role of President Obama's CTO might be. But one striking trend has largely flown under the national radar: the rise of the goverati.