Today the well-known and liked chief White House photographer Pete Souza announced that he has joined Instagram, taking parts of his work to a new digital realm. He confirmed in later tweets that he will only upload photos to the service that are taken with smartphones, though he appears unsure of what model his current handset is.
The content of the Instagram account will be separate from the White House’s Flickr account. In his first hours on the Facebook-owned platform, Souza has racked up a respectable 2,300 followers. That figure will be five digits by the end of the day.
You can follow Souza here on Instagram.
Souza matters, given his deep access to the Obama administration’s operations. He took, by way of an example, the iconic picture of the White House picture showing the Situation Room awaiting news on the raid that lead to the death of Osama Bin Laden. It has accumulated 2.7 million views on Flickr alone:
The content of Souza’s Instagram appears to be more pedestrian than his other efforts. His first image of the Seal of the President is almost cliché, but perhaps more appealing to Instagram’s younger audience:
As The Verge notes, that Souza is on Instagram isn’t much of a surprise, given that the Obama administration is exceptionally engaged across the Internet. Others have worked to emulate that success, such as when Ann Romney joined Pinterest.
Perhaps we can take Souza’s move as indicative that Instagram is now roughly as cool as Facebook.
Top, First Image Credit: The White House