By Anne Davies Washington correspondent
Team Obama mastered the art of using social networking sites, webcasts and talking to literally millions of supporters via email during the election campaign. Now the communications team in the White House, which includes many of these campaign hands, are adapting those techniques to selling President Barack Obama's policies.
In an "Open for questions" Town Hall webcast from the East Room of the White House - Mr Obama answered questions that had been submitted from people all over America, and then bumped up or down the list by millions of Americans who voted online.
The event was webcast, allowing people all over America to tune in from their computers at work and home to see what their President was saying.
How did it go? In terms of a participatory event it was a roaring success. The White House got 105,000 questions from 90,000 people. It then got 3.5 million votes which were used to bump questions up or down. The administration said 67,000 people watched live on whitehouse.gov but many more would have watched via the cable networks.
But in terms of providing hard questions on the president's policies or eliciting anything other than-by-the book answers, it was no ringing success.
Here's a sample question from four sophomores at Kent State University: "What proposals do you have to make college more affordable and to make student loans easier to get? And when will your national service program be available so we can take advantage of the scholarship?"
The president had no trouble with that one.
Richard in California asked why America couldn't have a universal health care system like Europe, where people are treated on the basis of needs rather than financial resources. Mr Obama explained he wanted a universal system, but there were some legacy issues, so the European model might not quite fit in the US.
The process also threw up some oddball questions as well. One of the most popular questions was whether legalising marijuana would be good for the economy and job creation.
"I don't know what this says about the online audience.... The answer is no, I don't think it's a good strategy to grow our economy," Mr Obama replied.
The "web-hall" offered President Obama an unedited, uninterrupted and highly controlled forum.
More and more, President Obama is turning to ways of communicating with millions of Americans that more closely resemble a campaign rally, where he controls the message and where he won't get edited, blown off course or have his remarks immediately analysed by a bevy of commentators.
Last week it was the Jay Leno Show, which allowed Mr Obama to be himself. Earlier this week he scheduled a prime time televised press conference live from the White House.
Part of the thinking behind this move appears to be his frustration with the Washington media. The White House press - the major newspapers, wire services, TV networks and cable channels - pick up issues outside the president's planned agenda. Issues like his Treasury Secretary, Tim Geithner's performance, withdrawals of nominees, earmarks and why hasn't reformed them.
The White House unhappiness about this is obvious. As well as attacking the overt critics Mr Obama has spent the last month deriding "cable chatter" on the 24/7 news channels.
On Wednesday night he went further calling the news cycle in Washington "petty and trivial."
"I know that in Washington sometimes it's easy to get caught up in the day-to-day cable chatter, and be distracted by the petty and the trivial, and everybody is keeping score are they up, are they down?" he said at a Democratic National Committee fundraiser in Washington on Thursday. "You know, one day I'm a genius; one day I'm a bum. Every day there's a new winner, a new loser."