Snapchat Gets Into the Political News Business

Dan Pfeiffer may be the earth’s only czar whose legacy lies not in scepter, but in selfie stick. In his years as senior adviser to President Barack Obama, and before that as White House communications director, or “czar,” Pfeiffer pushed and prodded the administration to employ the latest digital technologies—which helps explain why the comedian GloZell Green handed Obama green glitter lipstick in a YouTube interview, and why the president sported shades and took his own picture for a series of BuzzFeed GIFs. Pfeiffer left the White House in early March, and, not two weeks later, published an article on Medium predicting the future not of politics but of social media.

Nodding to recent presidential elections, Pfeiffer wrote, “If 2004 was about Meetup, 2008 was about Facebook, and 2012 was about Twitter, 2016 is going to be about Meerkat (or something just like it).” Livestreaming, he continued, “could do to television what blogs did to newspapers by removing many of the financial and structural advantages of legacy media institutions.”