President Obama Goes Live With YouTube

Internet interview first talk with president since State of the Union address

YouTube was the only filter between President Barack Obama and the American people Monday morning.

The president sat down for a live one-on-one interview to answer a select number of 11,689 questions submitted by more than 55,000 people. The YouTube CitizenTube interview was the president's first since his State of the Union address last week. 

The  interview was powered by a question-processing tool called Google Moderator, developed by YouTube's parent company. And the most digitally savy president in American history has a direct connection with Google Moderator: his current director of citizen participation.

Katie Stanton, who previously worked on Google Moderator and Google Finance, joined the White House as Mr. Obama's citizen czar after Google CEO Eric Schmidt became an economic advisor to the president. Stanton's job is to put Obama in front of voters using technology like YouTube.

The White House used Moderator to pick the "top questions" submitted on a wide range of topics to ask the president. Here's an archive of the live stream:

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