Obama Meets Facebook

I’m fascinated with Wednesday’s photos from Palo Alto and what’s going on with the two brands.

On the one hand, it seems that Zuckerberg and Facebook subsume Obama, reducing the President to, yeah, just another face on FB. On the other hand, if Facebook is “all that” right now, I imagine the White House is more than happy — the campaign underway now — to be identified with the cool, the youth, MZ, the banner … the whole nine yards.

Going back to the first hand, though, it’s impressive how Facebook has so established a cultural template that Obama and Zuckerberg, huge cultural icons against any other backdrop, would simply register as two more faces in a field of faces — an effect I don’t believe (in the photo-op at HQ) is any accident.

(photo: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images caption: U.S. President Barack Obama (L) and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg (R) greet the audience during a town hall style meeting at Facebook headquarters on April 20, 2011 in Palo Alto, California. Obama held the Facebook town hall to answer questions about the deficit and the economy.)