Barack Obama To Start Using His Twitter Account

Tweet

I hate to break it to the 8,693,506 people following President Barack Obama’s Twitter feed, but it’s been fairly obvious that it isn’t the President using that Twitter feed. You can usually tell when it’s a celebrity using their actual feed, and well, it’s not exactly a state secret that Mr. Obama has some PR man in the White House (probably Macon Phillips – Obama’s Director of New Media) working his Twitter feed. Until now, that is. The Obama 2012 reelection campaign has taken control of the @BarackObama Twitter account from the White House staff, and even the President will be occasionally writing Tweets (instead of just pretending to Tweet)!

The Twitter account sent this out today:

Welcome to a new @BarackObama. From now on, #Obama2012 staff will manage this account; tweets from the President will be signed “-BO.”

In case you haven’t noticed, 2012 is an election year and both President Obama and his rivals on the right are beginning to ramp up the campaigning. Obama’s Twitter feed had historically been updates on what the President was doing, but even before it was announced that the feed had been transferred over to the campaign staff, it was becoming increasingly about fundraising and such. For example, the Obama feed urged people to donate to win a chance to have dinner with the President.

In the United States, there are strict regulations about government staffers being used for election campaigns; hence some Obama staffers like former White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs leaving to manage the campaign on the Obama-Biden 2012 dime.

Anyway, times are a-changing and its election season in the United States. Hope you’re ready. Twitter has grown by leaps and bounds since 2008, and it should be interesting to see what role it plays in the 2012 Presidential Election.