U.S. President Obama promises to send his own personally crafted tweets to the American people now that he finally has a Twitter account. Using the Twitter handle @POTUS which stands for president of the United States, Obama also gave out a short description of himself by using the words, "Dad, husband, and 44th President of the United States."
Obama's new account, which is of course verified by Twitter, will be used as a new medium in engaging directly with the American people wherein the tweets would come exclusively from the U.S. president himself.
"President Obama is committed to making his Administration the most open and participatory in history, and @POTUS will give Americans a new venue to engage on the issues that matter most to them," said the White House in a blog post.
Obama's new Twitter handle also shows a picture of him with Michelle Obama in a commemorative walk as they lead a huge crowd across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma back in March. As of this writing, Obama had sent 3 tweets with the first one saying "Hello, Twitter! It's Barack. Really! Six years in, they're finally giving me my own account."
It should be noted that apart from @POTUS, the administration also has the existing @BarackObama Twitter handle which has 59.2 million followers and was started back in 2007. The account is being operated by Obama's former campaign handlers and is in fact rarely used by the U.S. president.
The other Twitter handle, @WhiteHouse, is used for communicating official missives to its followers which has now reached 6.1 million.
In less than a day, @POTUS now has more than 1.7 million followers and has 65 Twitter accounts that are being followed by the president. These accounts include several members of the White House staff, Obama's pro sports teams from Chicago, Harvard and Columbia universities and former U.S. presidents Bill Clinton and George H.W. Bush.
Unlike Barack Obama, Michelle Obama had been using Twitter since 2013 with the username @FLOTUS (first lady of the United States). Vice President Joe Biden uses the Twitter handle @VP and had been sending tweets since 2011.
Interestingly, the @POTUS username was originally owned by Steve D'Alimonte, a program director in Toronto. He kept the Twitter handle until 2011 when he decided to use @stevedalimonte instead.
It is also interesting to note how Obama mentioned Clinton on his third tweet which has been favorited 64K times and has been retweeted 41K times.
"Good question, @billclinton. The handle comes with the house. Know anyone interested in @FLOTUS?"
The tweet is in response to the message sent by Clinton who also added the hashtag #askingforafriend.
