Current President of the United States, Barack Obama, is by far the most tech savvy president we’ve had in the history of the country. He and his campaign are extremely active on Twitter, and recently held a question and answer session on Google Hangouts.

The President enjoys music as well, as he has apparently joined popular music streaming service Spotify:

A little Wilco, a bit of No Doubt—check out what else made it onto the new official #Obama2012 campaign playlist: OFA.BO/pHpWYy

— Barack Obama (@BarackObama) February 9, 2012

The playlist, which is being dubbed the “official 2012 campaign playlist”, includes tracks picked by Obama’s campaign staff, along with a few of his favorites.

The playlist is heavy on country acts like Sugarland and Darius Rucker, but does get a bit edgy thanks to a track by Florence + The Machine:

You can follow the President’s Spotify playlist by clicking this link and subscribing to it in the app.

Every campaign needs a soundtrack, right? It’s not surprising that the Obama campaign would make theirs public.

The White House will be checking Twitter after President Barack Obama is done with the yearly State of the Union address, the company shared today.

While the official White House account will be providing backstage tidbits leading up to the SOTU at 9pm ET, its staff will be following the hashtag #SOTU and encourages you to share your thoughts on what President Obama is telling the nation during his update.

Here’s what Twitter had to say about the White House’s use of the service during and after the speech:

Make your voice heard: Join the conversation by adding the hashtag #SOTU to your Tweets. Immediately after the debate, a team of senior White House officials will be ready to answer your questions when you add the hashtags #WHchat and #SOTU to your Tweets. And if you have something to say about specific parts of the speech or topics, you can include one of the following official hashtags from the White House:

#jobs
#manufacturing
#energy
#education
#fairness

Here’s a look at the types of things the White House is sharing on YouTube via Twitter:

Want a peek behind the scenes of the #SOTU? Here’s the story of how it comes together youtube.com/watch?v=FxwcJx…

— The White House (@whitehouse) January 24, 2012

Republican leaders will be watching the hashtag #SOTUGOP, so be sure to ask all of your questions using that hashtag as well.

Millions of Americans will be watching the State of the Union, so lets hope Twitter has prepared itself for a huge amount of traffic. During the Ravens/Patriots AFC Championship game on Sunday, the service had on and off downtime for nearly an hour before everything got worked out, and the political sentiment provided in real-time from its users during tonight’s speech should provide more chatter than the game.

In his push for a second term in 2012, Obama is showing us some of the laid-back charming sense of humor that helped elect him four years ago.

The video of the performance has almost 3.4 million views on YouTube, and here it is in case you missed it:

While the video alone shows you that President Obama is pretty cool, what’s cooler is that his camp has turned this viral karaoke session into an official ringtone. Yes, you can have Barack Obama singing “Let’s Stay Together” every single time you get a phone call.

Without a doubt, this is the first time that a President of the United States has had an official ringtone. His social media team is pretty savvy, I have to say.

So go ahead, download the ringtone for your iPhone or “other smartphones”, as the site puts it.

➤ POTUS on your phone

Two days ago, the White House joined Google+. It has announced its first order of business: a post State of the Union Google+ Hangout where you can ask the President Barack Obama your questions, and even become take part in the video chat.

Here’s what the Google+ team had to say about it today:

Exciting announcement: you can now submit your questions for President Obama for an exclusive Google+/YouTube interview at +The White House on January 30th. The President will answer a selection of your top-voted questions, and a few people will even get to join the first-ever Presidential hangout!

While the White House originally suggested that it would hold Hangouts, the fact that your questions can be answered by the President is pretty cool. When you visit the YouTube page of the White House, you’re presented with a submission form to ask your question:

You can then click a “thumbs up” or down on the questions and the ones that end up being the highest rated will be a part of the live Hangout on January 30th at 5:30 p.m. ET. The cut-off for submissions is midnight on January 28th.

This is a first of its kind for the White House, and turns Google+ users into the press corp. If your questions are among those that are voted up to the top, you might get to join the live Hangout with President Obama. In just two days, the White House has been circled by 15,437 users, so it’s safe to say that there will be a number of questions asked during the process.

➤ Your Interview With The President

Technology and politics go together like peanut butter and jelly. With Twitter being such a huge part of the campaign in 2008, specifically for Barack Obama, mainstream media is looking for more ways to visualize data to tell the whole story of a presidential election.

NBCPolitics has inked an exclusive deal with location check-in service foursquare, to provide data and graphics on where each candidate and their team is visiting, or checked into.

Here’s what the foursquare check-in data will look like on NBCPolitics.com, and future TV broadcasts:

The “Campaign Check-ins” map will be shown during the entire campaign cycle, leading up to the elections, on NBC’s site. In addition to this map, NBC and foursquare are creating co-branded political badges that will be available in 2012.

Vivian Schiller, Chief Digital Officer at NBC News had this to say about the partnership:

NBC News’ partnership with foursquare will allow our audiences to more fully engage with the 2012 campaign. By leveraging foursquare’s location-based technology, users will be able to go follow candidates and experience NBC’s election coverage in an innovative and unprecedented way.

This is a huge mainstream partnership for foursquare, giving the service the same kind of front and center treatment that Twitter had during the elections in 2008. Director of Media Partnerships for foursquare, Jonathan Crowley, sees this as a way for people to feel like they’re along for the entire campaign trail:

All politics is local, and foursquare is all about location; it’s the perfect way for politicians to communicate their actions to potential voters. Through this partnership with NBC News, we’re making it easy for people to keep up with all of the excitement on the campaign trail in real-time.

What will be even more interesting is if we’ll be able to get a decent sample size of data from foursquare to see how well-attended the voting booths are during the actual election.

Today, the President of the United States of America has increased his social media footprint by joining the growing Google+ service.

Barack Obama now has a page on Google+ where you can interact with him and his team. The account has been verified by Google, so it’s definitely the President himself.

It’s not surprising that it took this long for Obama to join the service, since Google only recently released its Pages product, which lets brands and public features have a presence on the network without having to tie it to their own personal Google account.

Barack Obama is by far our most advanced President when it comes to technology, having recently signed legislature with an autopen, and amassing millions of followers on Twitter.

It will be interested to see how involved the President becomes on Google+, considering that Google+ broadcasted Hangouts would be the perfect venue to interact with taxpayers and voters during this upcoming Presidential election.

When you’re visiting a city for the first time, you have a lot of options to help you find cool places to go. You can ask your friends and locals, or just surf around on the net looking for attractions.

One city Mayor has decided to utilize foursquare in hopes of becoming your Tampa tour guide.

Relying on the lists feature that foursquare provides, Mayor Bob Buckhorn and his office have generated expansive lists of things to do, see, and follow in Tampa, including city parks, attractions, dining and shopping, government buildings and public safety.

I’m in Tampa, now what

Politicians are using social media more and more these days, from President of the United States, Barack Obama, to Mayor of Newark, New Jersey, Cory Booker.

Tampa Mayor Buckhorn has taken social sharing to a new level though, becoming our virtual tour guide for the city of Tampa.

On top of hand-picking places to go while you visit his fair city in the state of Florida, the Mayor has left tips at specific venues, suggesting you try different things at restaurants for example. This turns touring around Tampa into a bit of a scavenger hunt. Nobody knows a city better than its Mayor, right?

Do you think more Mayors will get involved with social media, and specifically using foursquare in this way? I found it to be a perfect introduction to a city that I’ve never been too.

➤ Mayor Bob Buckhorn on foursquare

An article on NetworkWorld points out an interview with President of the United States of America, Barack Obama, where he admits receiving an Apple iPad 2 before it was released to the public. Not only did he get the iPad 2 early, but he received it directly from Steve Jobs himself.

President Obama tells ABC’s George Stephanopoulous:

Steve Jobs actually gave it to me, a little bit early. Yeah, it was cool. I got it directly from him.

It’s important to note that the President of the United States of America called this “Cool”.

Here’s the video of quote:

We have to also wonder what other products President Barack Obama might have. Perhaps the iPhone 5 or 4S? Perhaps a full blown Apple standalone Television in the Oval Office? It’s good to be the President.

As we know, the iPad 2 was released on March 11, 2011 and the photo below was shot during a dinner including the brightest tech minds such as then Apple’s CEO Steve Jobs, Google’s then CEO Eric Schmidt, and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Now we can add President Barack Obama to that list.

We wonder how Barack Obama is liking iOS5 so far and if he has given his Presidential feedback and bug reporting.

Change, indeed.