ReadWriteWeb

Today is the first day of the 112th Congress of the United States of America. One way that the incoming Republican majority will embrace innovation and transparency in the legislative process will be increased use of video and new media. As Marshall Kirkpatrick wrote at ReadWriteWeb, commenting on CNN's report yesterday, Facebook will livestream the opening day of Congress.

In a post on Speaker.gov, the incoming speaker invited people to visit the "Pledge to America" Facebook page to view the transition to a GOP-controlled House and comment on the feed. (The post was originally at GOPLeader.gov before Speaker.gov went live, which created a broken link from the speaker's tweet. Even e-transitions are bumpy at times.)

We have spent a great deal of time covering US President Barack Obama's Web presence, from the Democrat's social media strategies to whitehouse.gov. So when the Republicans in the US Congress released a new version of their site - complete with RSS feeds and an API - we felt it only appropriate to give the site a bi-partisan once over. And while the site has received an obvious facelift, it's the underlying functionality - and access to information - that drew our attention.