As time for departure from office nears for perhaps the most active world leader on social media — President Obama, the White House has now detailed on how those powerful social media accounts, associated with Obama will be transferred to the new president.
In a post titled “The Digital Transition: How the Presidential Transition Works in the Social Media Age“, White House representative Kori Schulman has detailed on how the White House plans to “preserve and pass on the digital history of the Obama administration”.
First up, Twitter. President Obama’s account, starting January 20th, will receive a fresh start of sorts. The account will retain its more than 11 million followers, but start with no tweets on the timeline. All of President Obama’s tweets will be available to the public under a new handle — @POTUS44 — signifying the 44th president of the United States.
This new handle will be created and maintained by NARA (National Archives and Records Administration), and will be accessible to the public on Twitter as an archive of President Obama’s use of the account. This will also be the case for other currently-in-use official Government Twitter handles like @WhiteHouse, @FLOTUS, @PressSec, and @VP.
Similar will be the case with Instagram and Facebook. The incoming White House will gain 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.
The same will go with all 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. All of the Obama administration content will be accessible on new ”44” URLs.
