The White House has announced the launch of Open for Questions, a website aimed at collecting questions from US citizens to be answered by the president.

Users of the website can post their questions which afterwards are to be rated by others just like in Digg and Reddit social bookmarking sites. Top rated questions will be answered by Barack Obama.

The website is moderated by the community. Users can also upload videos of themselves asking their questions.

A blog post on the White House site said the website aimed at "encouraging transparency and accountability". "Open for Questions is ... the president's latest effort to open up the White House and give Americans from around the country a direct line to the administration," it continued.

It should also be reminded that social networks, such as Facebook and MySpace, were heavily used by Mr Obama during his election campaign.