This Article is From Mar 02, 2012

Obama gets a Facebook upgrade

Obama gets a Facebook upgrade
On Thursday, another Facebook user adopted the site's new Timeline feature, regaling followers with the minutiae typical of the world's cyber capital of oversharing.

He worked at an ice cream parlor in 1978. He started his current job in 2009. He takes lots of pictures with his wife and kids.

This particular account holder, however, has the force of more than 25 million "likes" behind him and a pretty powerful army.

Indeed, as Facebook announced that the Timeline feature would be expanded to branded pages for businesses and public figures, President Obama's Facebook Page adopted the new format on Thursday, offering visitors a peek at his extended biography, a deluge of pictures and videos from his campaign and presidency, and a jab at those who question the authenticity of his birth certificate.

The first date on the timeline is August 4, 1961, the President's birthday. The message reads, "Made in the USA" and includes a photo of his birth certificate, emblazoned onto a coffee mug, which is available for $22.50 on Mr. Obama's campaign Web site.

Subsequent posts provide snippets of Mr. Obama's history, both familiar and little known. His first job was at the counter of a Baskin-Robbins in 1978 - a fact that inspired 73 "likes" by late Thursday evening. He played tennis and basketball and participated as a concert choir singer at the Punahou School in Hawaii (21 likes).

In 1989, he met a woman named Michelle Robinson at a law firm in Chicago (30 likes). They married on October 3, 1992, (165 likes, though an accompanying photograph may have skewed the results).

More recent years are dominated by political fodder: images of jaunts with voters in Peterborough, N.H., and Erie, Pa. (and one baby in Toledo, Ohio); Michelle Obama's speech at the Democratic National Convention in 2008; the President addressing the United Nations General Assembly; and, recently, Mr. Obama serenading the crowd with Al Green's "Let's Stay Together" at a fund-raiser at the Apollo Theater in New York.

Atop the page, visitors encounter a table of net job creation totals, by month, from December 2007 to the present. (Many commenters disputed the figures Thursday.) And a photo dated February 26 depicts a supporter holding a white board that lists the President's accomplishments.

Still, if "likes" are the metric, the most popular post on the Timeline on Thursday was probably the first. Beneath the image of the "Made in the USA" mug, 485 visitors expressed their approval.

"This was the first thing I checked for in the timeline," one wrote. "Well done."
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