The Twitterverse welcomed arguably its most illustrious member on Monday, as U.S. President Barack Obama posted the first tweet from his new personal account
Under the new @POTUS (President of the United States) account, the 44th Pres. will communicate with the outside world.
“Hello, Twitter! It’s Barack. Really! Six years in, they’re finally giving me my own account,” read Obama’s first tweet from the verified account.
By ‘own’ account Obama is referring to his two handles, @BarackObama and @WhiteHouse, both of which are run by the Administration and Organising for Action (previously Obama’s campaign machine) rather than the president himself.
The account has certainly proved popular so far, with over 600,000 people following Obama in a little over two hours since the first tweet was published.
A spokesperson wrote on the White House blog: “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.
“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 is probably the second most important personality to make a big social media splash in recent weeks
David Beckham broke Instagram records a couple of weeks back with his first photo, an alluring in-bed selfie which has already amassed a whopping 945,000 likes.
Becks has also racked up 6.1m followers on the Facebook-owned photo sharing site. Beat that, Mr President.
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Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
Professional conduct
We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.