Barack Obama has added you as a friend on Facebook

Despite common assumptions that President-elect Barack Obama's Cabinet nominees are told of their selection via personal phone calls, The Times has learned that the famously tech-friendly Obama is actually notifying his picks by "friending" them on the social networking site Facebook. Requests to Obama for comment on the following transcript have gone unanswered, though he did "poke" us just as this went to press.

- Barack is now friends with Rahm Emanuel.
- Rahm Emanuel is cursing anyway.

- Barack is now friends with Bill Richardson, Lawrence Summers and Timothy Geithner.
- Bill Richardson is trading carbon credits for a new goatee.
- Lawrence Summers and Joe Biden are now friends via The White Men Who Gaffe friend-finder tool.

- Timothy Geithner is wondering whether take-out coffee suddenly got hotter or those protective cup sleeves suddenly stopped working. Discuss.

- Barack is now friends with Robert Gates, Janet Napolitano, retired Marine Gen. James Jones and Hillary Clinton.
- Janet Napolitano is single and lovin' it! (nota bene Ed Rendell.)
- James Jones is bi . . . partisan!
        Timothy Geithner: LOL!
        Rahm Emanuel: *%@*#!
- Eric Holder is begging your pardon.
- Robert Gates is déjà vu-ing.
- Hillary Clinton wishes Bill would get busy with that drywall project at the house.