No, the White House hasn't ditched YouTube
A member of the CNET Blog Network on Monday reported that the White House has moved to a new video player. That was wrong.
The White House has denied that it has "abandoned YouTube as the provider of the embedded videos on the president's official home page."
In the report written by Chris Soghoian, a contributor to CNET's Blog Network, the author correctly noted that President Obama's weekly video address was distributed via a Flash player from Akamai instead of YouTube. But the author also wrote that the White House was bowing to pressure from privacy activists. White House officials acknowledged switching players but denied making any permanent decisions about them, or that they were motivated by privacy concerns.
"This week we tested a new way of presenting the President's weekly address by using a player developed in-house," Nick Shapiro, a White House spokesman, wrote in an e-mail. "This decision is more about better understanding our internal capabilities than it is a position on third-party solutions or a policy. The weekly address was also published in third-party video hosting communities and we will likely continue to embed videos from these services on WhiteHouse.gov in the future."
Those "third-party solutions" Shapiro is talking about include YouTube. The Web's largest video site continues to see video contributions to the White House channel, according to Scott Rubin, a YouTube spokesman.
"The White House hasn't ditched us at all," Rubin said. "If you look at the White House's YouTube channel, you'll see videos are being posted. We're just really excited that there are channels on YouTube that help us see what's going on with the federal government."