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THE WHITE HOUSE
Office of Media Affairs
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
October 24, 1995
Contact: Rick Borchelt, 202/456-6020
rborchelt@ostp.eop.gov
White House Internet Service Marks First Anniversary;
Approaching Four-Million Mark
WASHINGTON -- The White House this month celebrates the first anniversary
of its award-winning service, Welcome to the White House: An Interactive
Citizens' Handbook, launched Oct. 21, 1994. The service will soon surpass
4 million requests for its principal page and 50 million total pages and
images delivered to users.
Over the past year, almost 150,000 people have signed the President's
electronic guestbook. The average number of daily users has more than
tripled in a year.
In launching the service last year, Vice President Gore said that,
"This service is an example of how we can provide government services and
information to the public in a more timely manner, more efficiently and
more cost effectively. It shows our continued commitment to being a
leader in developing the National Information Infrastructure."
"Our experience with this in the past year has been nothing short of
astounding," said John H. Gibbons, Assistant to the President for Science
and Technology. "Although less than 10 percent of the U.S. population has
access to the Internet today, almost as many people have visited the White
House site on the Internet as toured the White House building and grounds
last year."
The White House service is a part of the World Wide Web, the
component of the global Internet that supports multimedia applications.
It guides Internet users looking for information and services from the
U.S. government, provides information on White House announcements and
public events, and makes available online tours of the White House
complex.
The White House Web site has been named one of the "Best of the Web"
by the Whole Internet Catalogue, was a finalist in the "Best of the NII
Awards," and was named one of PC Magazine's Top 100 Internet services. It
is the only site not related to computers on the Webcrawler Top Ten, a
service that calculates popularity based on the number of links on the
Internet from one service to another.
A new version of Welcome to the White House is under development and
will be released later this year. It will make it easier to find
information and services from government agencies, make it easier to find
White House information, expand the sections on White House history, and
include greater usage of audio and photographic images.
The Internet address for Welcome to the White House is
http://www.whitehouse.gov.
The White House also operates two other Internet-based services. Its
publications service allows users to subscribe to White House press
releases and other documents, which are received by approximately 250,000
people every day. The other service is Presidential electronic mail. Over
700,000 people have sent the President,
Vice President and
First Lady
electronic mail since that service was begun in June 1993. These services
also are accessible on the White House Web site.
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