Using lessons from Barack Obama’s tech-savvy presidential campaign, the Justice Department is the latest to revamp its Web site, reports MainJustice.com. The department is now a big presence on social-networking sites, having amassed 92,000 followers on the microblogging site Twitter, 1,400 Facebook fans, and 500 MySpace friends.
“Had we done something like this under Attorney General Ashcroft and President Bush, the howls would be deafening,” said Ashcroft spokesman Mark Corallo. Behind the new design is Tracy Russo, who was in charge of blogger outreach for John Edwards’ 2008 presidential campaign. Matt Miller, director of the department's Office of Public Affairs, said that updating the site and venturing into new media were priorities early on, and that they had “nothing to do with public relations.” He said, “This is a question of being open and transparent.”