President-elect Barack Obama today began his pre-inauguration conversation with the American people by giving his first weekly radio address, which was also released as a YouTube video (above). In it he discusses the current economic crisis.

Eric Shonfeld at TechCrunch: Obama to post fireside chats on YouTube.

Brian Solis in today's TechCrunch: Is Obama ready to be a two-way president? Excerpt:

The Obama team, for example befriended almost 130,000 friends on Twitter with an almost equal amount following him.

On Facebook, the Obama page boasted over three million fans compared to McCain’s 618,000.

YouTube also swayed towards Obama with a network of 358,000 to 191,000,
with the Obama camp posting over 1,800 videos compared to McCain’s 330.
These videos accounted for 110 million views. ...

His first step towards bringing the vision of running a cross-party campaign is the launch of Change.gov, a portal for transparency and interaction during, and hopefully past, the transition.

Other options Solis cites: solicit the public's policy proposals on Change For Us, create a channel on Magnify.net, uStream.tv or BlogTalkRadio, create a citizen feedback and collaboration page at GetSatisfaction.

Brett Hurt at Bazaarblog: This election was won by social media.

The rise and fall and rise of liberalism

Meantime, in this week's Nov. 24 issue of Time magazine, I haven't seen anyone else post the splendid cover art of Obama as FDR — see below. In the cover story, Peter Beinart gives the most incisive look at The New Liberal Order — from FDR to LBJ to Obama — that I've read anywhere. (I would have tweeted it instead of blogged it, but I want to be able to refer back to this piece years from now.)

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