Give the White House credit for knowing exactly the sort of snark many folks are prepared to heap upon them for joining Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter. What exactly, some will no doubt ask, is the President of the United States doing poking and tweeting and [insert whatever it is you do on MySpace]? Doesn't he have better things to do? The White House had an answer prepared right from the start: President Obama's not messing around on the Internets in some ill-considered attempt to look super with-it. He's tweeting to stop the spread of a global pandemic. Okay with you?

The White House new media team has a powerful spokesperson for their efforts: Obama himself. In this weekend's video address, he briefly makes the presidential case for the power of social media in the context of halting the spread of swine flu/H1N1 (at about the 1:40 mark):

We have asked every American to take the same steps you would take to prevent any other flu: keep your hands washed; cover your mouth when you cough; stay home from work if you're sick; and keep your children home from school if they're sick. And the White House has launched pages in Facebook, MySpace and Twitter to support the ongoing efforts by the CDC to update the public as quickly and effectively as possible.

Somewhat relatedly, here's a sign that the White House is aware of at least some of our Internet traditions, including the Twitter custom of taking Friday's to recommend people for others to follow. A tweet from @whitehouse yesterday:

#followfriday Official info on H1N1: @CDCemergency @CDC_eHealth @whonews @BirdFluGov @dhsjournal @usedgov Thanks for the positive feedback!

The question is, will @BirdFluGov follow @whitehouse back? Stay tuned.

In the blast of social media noise, government warnings, blog posts, and breaking news updates this week on the expanding swine flu epidemic, one link seemed to carry some added weight: Google had posted a collaborative map to track the outbreak on a global basis.

"Follow the Swine Flu Pandemic in Real Time With Google Maps," urged tech blog Gizmodo. The Twitter recommendations were legion. News outlets from MSNBC to the Chicago Tribune cited the online map, with its virtual push-pins linked to suspected and confirmed cases.

Clearly, an example of a new paradigm of crowd-sourced reporting in a crisis, right? Perhaps. But there are a couple of serious problems with the much-hyped Google swine flu map: the Google team didn't put it up, and the map is fantastically inaccurate.

The CDC is attempting to be all over swine flu like stink on a pig farm. The Twitter channel @CDCemergency is feeding out the latest official news on the outbreak -- like the news that the recommended treatment for swine flu is the scary sounding oseltamivir and zanamivir. And they're keeping up a lively section at cdc.gov/swineflu. You might want to turn to these official channels in these uncertain times, because Foreign Policy's Evgeny Morozov is making the case that we civilians are behaving badly on Twitter, spreading misinformation and sparking hysteria. That's a pretty broad brush Morozov's painting with, though -- dangerously close to the curmudgeonly take on new technologies that always seem to follow the initial burst of enthusiasm, just after we all realize that we've all behaved like giddy school children given a new toy to play with. We certainly managed in the past to get plenty worked up about bird flu without the benefit of Twitter, no?

Anyhoo, what are you seeing on the swine flu front online?