Obama's campaign rolls onto the Tumblr scene

Team Obama expands the social media reach of its tech savvy presence, asks for people to contribute

Politicians and political campaigns have had to adopt social media at a rapid pace in order to gain momentum and the attention of younger, tech-savvy voters. At this point, most political players have Facebook and Twitter accounts, and many also have YouTube channels and Flickr pages.

Tumblr has now been added to the list of new ways for candidates to speak to voters and give them a glimpse behind the political curtain.

This week Barack Obama started his first tumblr account  -- just days after the First Lady sent out her very first tweet.

The first blog on the site said that "there are lots of reasons we’re excited to be launching the Obama 2012 campaign’s new Tumblr today. But mostly it’s because we’re looking at this as an opportunity to create something that’s not just ours, but yours, too."

Tumblr has a submission feature where the Obama campaigners hope that users will ask questions of the President, upload campaign photos, attach articles and graphs they see and anything else relevant to interact with the Commander-in-Chief.

This feature demands that such visible campaigns as a presidential election will require several moderators to assure that the content is quality and appropriate but it can provide a great format for voter participation.

I was unable to find any of the front runners in 2012 with a Tumblr account, yet, but now that Obama is on the site it will be a matter of weeks before all the candidates find time to appoint a staff Tumblr.

Earlier this year Tumblr was estimated to receive 8.4 billion page views monthly and has more than 86 million viewers globally.

Tuesday morning there was study released on the importance of a federal government presence on social media sites. 

"Social media is no longer a nice to have but a necessity in both the private sector and the public sector. It's just the way people communicate now," said Larry Freed, president and CEO of the analytic company ForeSee, in a statement. "The good news is that federal departments are participating in social media; the bad news is that efforts are happening at a variety of levels, and the effect can be muddled for citizens."

Currently politicians are playing catch-up to the wave of social media interaction but on sites such as Twitter, it is hard to compete with Obama's 10.7+ million followers when the only Republican frontrunner that breaks 100,000 followers is Mitt Romney's 146,000+ attentive Twitterers. 

The 2012 candidates, if they all join Tumblr soon, could be on even footing for that social medium and have the advantage of placing any type of content on the site including video, photo, links, chats or polls. Tumblr is a great all-in-one tool with more customization and independance compared to the standard Facebook fan page.

Now if only we could get Michelle Obama on Twitter for real -- not that she is running for political office but I'd just like to read her tweets and click 'follow Michelle Obama.'