Obama debuts personal Twitter account: 'It's Barack. For real!'
US President Barack Obama sent his first message from his personal Twitter account on Monday, quickly gaining tens of thousands of followers, in the White House's latest initiative to expand its presence on social media.
By Roberta Rampton
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - US President Barack Obama sent the first message from his personal Twitter account on Monday and quickly gained tens of thousands of followers, in the White House's latest initiative to expand its presence on social media.
"Hey Twitter! This is Barack. For real! After six years I finally got my own account," Obama tweeted on his @POTUS account (short for President of the United States), which gained over 217 followers in the first 45 minutes.
The Twitter page shows an image of Obama, his family, and civil rights leaders crossing the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, on the 50th anniversary of Bloody Sunday earlier this year. He described himself as a "father, husband, and 44th president of the United States" and went on to follow the sports teams of his beloved Chicago and key members of his White House staff, among others.
Obama is also following former presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton, but not the @HillaryClinton account, which belongs to his former Secretary of State and frontrunner to win the Democratic nomination in the 2016 presidential election.
This wasn't the first time Obama used the tool. He signed tweets from the @WhiteHouse account with his initials "-bo" a few times, and also used @BarackObama, an account managed by his former campaign team.
The @POTUS account will be "a new way for President Obama to engage directly with the American people, with tweets exclusively his own," said Alex Wall, White House social media strategist, in a blog post. When Obama concludes his second term, the @POTUS account will be passed on to future presidents, Wall clarified in a tweet.