Until May 18, President Obama didn’t have his own Twitter account. After he became president, the @BarackObama account was given to his former campaign organization to operate, and he shares the @WhiteHouse account with other staff.
Now he has his own. You can follow him @POTUS, which is the acronym for “President Of The United States.”
At 11:38 a.m. EDT, the new account had its first tweet. “Hello, Twitter! It’s Barack. Really! Six years in, they’re finally giving me my own account.”
Less than half an hour later, @POTUS had 100,000 followers. After 24 hours, the number had risen to 1.88 million.
According to a White House blog post, the tweets on @POTUS are “coming exclusively from him.”
So far, Obama has followed several U.S. government officials, including Secretary of State John Kerry, as well as Chicago-area sports teams, and he has traded jokes with former President Bill Clinton.
