My 24 Hours Income Team Impact: The White House Details its Social Media Transition Plans

Tuesday, November 1, 2016

The White House Details its Social Media Transition Plans

The White House announced its plans for transitioning the Obama administration’s social media accounts to the next president of the U.S.

To start, the president’s Twitter handle, @POTUS, will be given to the new president Jan. 20, 2017. The account will keep its 11 million followers, but it will have no tweets on its timeline. President Barack Obama’s tweets will be viewable on a new Twitter account, @POTUS44, which will be maintained by the National Archives and Records Administration. In addition, President Obama’s tweets will be archived at NARA “in the same manner as all other presidential records.”

The White House said this will also be the case for other Twitter handles, including @WhiteHouse, @FLOTUS, @PressSec and @VP.

Finally, individual official Twitter accounts, such as @KS44, will be maintained by NARA after the transition, and they will be available for the public to view.

Meanwhile, the White House Instagram and Facebook pages will also be transferred to the next president’s team. The Instagram and Facebook pages will keep their followers, but the timelines will start clear. The content from the Obama White House Instagram and Facebook accounts will remain viewable at http://ift.tt/2f2ck2x and http://ift.tt/2eV3K2p.

In addition, the White House said the Facebook accounts for President Obama and Vice President Joe Biden, as well as the Instagram accounts belonging to First Lady Michelle Obama and Biden will be moved to new user names containing the number 44, which will be preserved by NARA.

In a blog post, Kori Schulman, special assistant to the president and deputy chief digital officer, said the plans will be similar for other official accounts used by the Obama administration:

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.

Readers: Do you follow the White House on social media?