Early Reaction as the US President Gets Its Own Twitter Account

Perhaps in preparation for a time when Barack Obama and his associated Twitter account no longer speaks as President, the White House set up a verified account for the President of the United States on May 18. In minutes of its first tweet, the account had already amassed thousands of followers as Obama tweeted, “Hello, Twitter! It’s Barack. Really! Six years in, they’re finally giving me my own account.”

A Twitter data map shows a timeline where people across the world were talking about @POTUS after the account first tweeted.

Some conversation has focused on who had the handle @POTUS before it became the official account for the President and that, as well as some early reaction from Twitter, is included below. Credit: Various