Obama Joins the Twitter World

Barack Obama, the President of the United States, opened his personal account on the social media platform Twitter on Monday, May 18, and according to reports, by the evening of the same day, over one million people had signed up to follow his tweets. The New York Times writes that this is a sign of the popularity of his Twitter account, as a comparison shows that David Cameron, the Prime Minister of the UK, who joined Twitter in January 2010, currently has one million followers, and Pope Francis, who opened his Twitter account in December 2012, has just over six million followers. Twitter is a social network that allows users to send messages of up to 140 characters each time. Barack Obama wrote in his Twitter profile, 'Father, husband, and the 44th President of the United States,' and also posted a photo from one of his public events on this page. Since 2007, another account related to Barack Obama has existed on Twitter. This Twitter account (BarackObama@) has been managed by the President's campaign team and currently has 59.2 million followers. Barack Obama has promised that he will personally write messages on his new Twitter account and will not delegate its updates to his staff. On the same day of the launch of this new account, Bill Clinton, the former President of the United States, humorously tweeted the question, 'Will this username remain for the presidency, or will the new Twitter account go with Barack Obama after he leaves the presidency?' Barack Obama's username is POTUS@ (short for President of the United States). Bill Clinton added the hashtag 'askingforafriend#' at the end of his message. Hillary Clinton, the former Secretary of State under Obama and Bill Clinton's wife, is a candidate for the Democratic Party in the presidential election.