Skip to main content

Ready for the 2013 Presidential Inauguration? Be sure to bring your ‘social media butler’

Image used with permission by copyright holder

With the Presidential Inauguration swiftly approaching, you may be at a loss for how to ring in the next four years right. For those actually going down to Washington for the festivities (read: the fabulously wealthy), the week-long celebration promises galas and balls galore, all to commemorate a renewed faith in our country’s future.

If you’re attending, you’ll obviously be live-tweeting the entire affair. But even that might get a little hectic. Who has time to tweet when there’s caviar to be eaten? Luckily, Washington’s Madison Hotel thinks of everything. Included with their “Inaugural Town and Country” package, you get your own “Dedicated Social Media Butler.”

Seriously. Because you always needed someone else to Instagram you living the good life.

“I think our entire world is so social right now, that everyone wants to tell people where they are,” said Meredith Goldberg, Marketing Manager for the Madison and the package’s creator. “They want to check in at the inauguration. It’s a different world than it was four years ago. Everyone is Facebooking. Everyone is tweeting.”

At $47,000, the Madison Hotel’s package already comes complete with a four night stay in one of their Presidential suites, your own Lincoln Town Car and driver, a private tour of D.C. with up to 22 of your friends, a $5,000 shopping spree at Brooks Brothers, and a night at the Landsdowne Resort with a couple’s massage — all of which screams Liberace-esque excess.

But having your own social media butler takes the cake. The role is to be filled by Victoria Devine, founder of Anchor Media, a D.C.-based social marketing firm, who Goldberg contacted to take on the responsibility of tending to the social media needs of her inauguration-bound clientele.

“I think it’s really exciting,” Devine tells us. “It’s new. It’s unique. The title is awesome, and I love showing people D.C.” Devine sees it as an opportunity, willing to work “24/7 if they prefer” but most people would want to get some sleep between all the partying.

Presently, the admittedly extravagant package hasn’t seen any takers, but Goldberg and Devine are both committed to the idea. And if it does see multiple interested revelers, well, the more the merrier.

“I mean, this is what’s next, no?” said Goldberg.

Kwame Opam
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Kwame graduated from Stony Brook University with BA in Anthropology and has a Masters in Media Studies. He's done stints at…
How to go live on TikTok (and can you with under 1,000 followers?)
Tik Tok

It only takes a few steps to go live on TikTok and broadcast yourself to the world:

Touch the + button at the bottom of the screen.
Press the Live option under the record button.
Come up with a title for your live stream. 
Click Go Live to begin.

Read more
Bluesky barrels toward 1 million new sign-ups in a day
Bluesky social media app logo.

Social media app Bluesky has picked nearly a million new users just a day after exiting its invitation-only beta and opening to everyone.

In a post on its main rival -- X (formerly Twitter) -- Bluesky shared a chart showing a sudden boost in usage on the app, which can now be downloaded for free for iPhone and Android devices.

Read more
How to make a GIF from a YouTube video
woman sitting and using laptop

Sometimes, whether you're chatting with friends or posting on social media, words just aren't enough -- you need a GIF to fully convey your feelings. If there's a moment from a YouTube video that you want to snip into a GIF, the good news is that you don't need complex software to so it. There are now a bunch of ways to make a GIF from a YouTube video right in your browser.

If you want to use desktop software like Photoshop to make a GIF, then you'll need to download the YouTube video first before you can start making a GIF. However, if you don't want to go through that bother then there are several ways you can make a GIF right in your browser, without the need to download anything. That's ideal if you're working with a low-specced laptop or on a phone, as all the processing to make the GIF is done in the cloud rather than on your machine. With these options you can make quick and fun GIFs from YouTube videos in just a few minutes.
Use GIFs.com for great customization
Step 1: Find the YouTube video that you want to turn into a GIF (perhaps a NASA archive?) and copy its URL.

Read more