Obama Using Google+ For Post-State Of The Union Interview

President Obama will deliver a live Google+ hangout answering questions from US citizens, the White House has announced, the first entirely virtual interview staged by the government. Set to take place on Monday, January 30, the President will answer questions submitted via the government's YouTube channel, particularly those concerning the topics Obama is set to discuss at the State of the Union address tomorrow.

The White House only joined Google+ on January 20, last Friday, but has already accrued around 17,000 +1's at time of writing. It has also gathered a fair number of comments, both positive and negative, and we can see Obama's online interview being a hotly-discussed event.

That the administration has decided to use Google+ is quite the coup for Google, which is still facing questions around antitrust behavior after integrating results from the social network into general search. Google+ broke the 90m user mark last week, a figure which is likely to increase rapidly since the search giant is now pushing sign-ups for all new users.

If you're keen to ask a question, you'll need to have it submitted by the end of the day on Saturday, January 28 – that's this coming Saturday – and hope that it gets sufficient votes to filter up to Obama's attention. Some of those picked to have their questions answered will also be invited to join the president in the Google+ hangout.