Jenna Buzzacco-Foerster
Much has been said about the peaceful transition of power, but what about the peaceful transition of the presidential Twitter account?
Don’t worry, there’s a plan for that.
The POLITICO Morning Tech email reported this morning that a plan is in place to transition all of President Barack Obama’s tweets from the @POTUS account to @POTUS 44, an “archived Obama-era version of the account. The account will retain all of the current followers, while also attaching those same followers to the account that gets handed over to President-elect Donald Trump.
“That is, if you follow the presidential account now you’ll eventually, automagically, end up following both @POTUS44 and @POTUS,” reported POLITICO Morning Tech.
The White House issued a memo in October, outlining how it would transition the president’s social media presence. According to the memo, @POTUS will be made available to Trump and maintain its more than 11 million followers, “but start with no tweets on timeline.” The White House said the social media accounts of @WhiteHouse, @FLOTUS, @PressSec and @VP.
On Instagram and Facebook, the memo explained, the incoming White House gains access to the “White House username, URL, and retain the followers, but will start with no content on the timeline.”
“An archive of White House content that was posted to the Obama White House Instagram and Facebook will continue to be accessible to the public at Instagram.com/ObamaWhiteHouse and Facebook.com/ObamaWhiteHouse. Facebook accounts for President Obama and the Vice President and the Instagram accounts belonging to the First Lady and Vice President will be moved to new “44” usernames and preserved by NARA,” according to the report.
“We’ll follow a similar approach with other official accounts on platforms including Medium, Tumblr, and YouTube. These presences will be made available to the 45th White House, including the “White House” username, /WhiteHouse URL, and the followers, but start with no content on the accounts. The Obama White House content will be preserved and accessible in the same manner as all other presidential records and continue to be available on the platform at a new URL. “
But don’t stop looking for tweets from Trump’s personal twitter account. CNET reported this week that Trump said he would rather keep using @realDonaldTrump.
