Watching the State of the Union Address Online

Tonight's State of the Union address will give President Barack Obama a platform to address both houses of Congress, a prime time TV audience and — yes — online viewers.

The speech, expected to run 60 to 90 minutes, will be live streamed on whitehouse.gov/live and the following websites at 9 p.m. EST/6 p.m. PST: Hulu, CBS News, CNN Live, MSNBC, C-SPAN, PBC NewsHour (powered by UStream) and YouTube. The White House’s online broadcast will include graphics and stats to complement the text of Obama’s speech.

Our very social president — who earlier this month joined Instagram — will be answering some of the top-voted questions submitted on YouTube. Viewers have until Jan. 28 to ask their questions on youtube.com/askobama. Last year, more than 142,000 questions were submitted with an additional 1.38 million votes cast. This year, the president will utilize Google Plus, the search giant's new social networking platform, to “hang out,” or live video chat, with constituents Jan. 30 for about 45 minutes.

Obama’s 2011 State of the Union gathered a bevy of social buzz, with Tweetbeat (now Walmart Labs) counting 400,000 tweets mentioning the address, 100,000 of which appeared in the first half hour of the event. The majority of the chatter was focused on public education, government spending, job creation and Republicans.