Barack Obama on Twitter again as ‘whitehouse’
By Dave Parrack
President Obama was a mainstay on Twitter in the run up to the election. Then came election day when Barack became the 44th President of the U.S.A. and well, things have gone a little quieter with just two tweets in the four months since he was sworn in. Now, he’s back, although @BarackObama has been replaced with @whitehouse.
Barack Obama was elected President of the United States of America for a variety of different reasons. One of these is unquestionably due to the way he and his team campaigned, using social media and zeitgeist Web sites such as Twitter, YouTube, Flickr, and MySpace to draw in new, younger people who wouldn’t normally have any interest in politics.
The use of Twitter and the like gave people a way of being in touch with the presidential candidate, doing away with the trends of old when voters were on one side of the fence, politicians on the other. All of a sudden, everyone was pulling in the same direction and communicating as one.
However, much to many people’s chagrin, once the election was over and Obama found himself the new President, the use of these Web sites dropped off as suddenly as they had begun. It was as if they’d only been a tool to get elected, with the idea of actually having a two-way conversation with the people who hold the true power (the voters) being a myth once the votes had been counted. Which surely can’t have been the case, can it?
Now however, Barack Obama is back on Twitter, although the whole exercise has been generalized so that it means nothing to real people. The address used to be @BarackObama but is now @whitehouse to fit in with the usernames the White House has registered and is using on other sites such as YouTube and Flickr.
This serves the purpose of meaning Obama himself no longer has to have anything to do with the updating of any of these sites. Instead, White House staffers can do it all and it still feels genuine. I’m not gullible enough to believe Obama used to write all his own tweets but I’m sure some came courtesy of his own fingers. Now, none will.
White House updates began again around noon today and it’s definitely worth following the account of the folks in charge of the United States. Just don’t expect the President to write any of his own tweets from now on. Being president means having lackeys to do that for you instead.
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on Friday, May 1st, 2009 at 5:57 pm
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