After more than six years in the White House, President Barack Obama finally got his very own Twitter account Monday.
“Hello, Twitter! It’s Barack,” he wrote in his first tweet @POTUS. “Really! Six years in, they're finally giving me my own account.”
That’s not to say that Obama never tweeted. It’s just that he had always done so at @barackobama, an account managed by Organizing for Action, a spinoff of his campaign, using his initials to indicate it was a personal tweet.
This is a White House that loves bypassing the media and releasing their own news on social media so it’s surprising Obama had not done this before.
“The @POTUS Twitter account will serve as a new way for President Obama to engage directly with the American people, with tweets coming exclusively from him,” the White House said in a statement. “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.”
Obama describes himself as “Dad, husband, and 44th President of the United States.”
Obama immediately began following two former presidents, the universities he attended, Chicago sports teams and administration officials and agencies.
By late afternoon, Obama already had more than one million followers.
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