President Obama Will Now Be On Twitter With @POTUS

Barack Obama now has his own official Twitter account. Three hours after his first (and so far, only) tweet, the president has 110,000 retweets, 140,000 faves and 652,000 followers. Not bad for a day's work in the Oval Office.

The move comes more than two years after his wife, first lady Michelle Obama, added two accounts to her name.

In January 2013, a Twitter account for the First Lady of the United States (@FLOTUS) was launched. The account @MichelleObama is run by the staff of Organizing for Action, Obama's political organization, with tweets signed by -mo. That was the same case for the president, with tweets signed -bo, until now.

Hillary Clinton also uses that method to sign the personal tweets on her account. But that’s not to say that any of these messages are actually typed and sent by the individuals themselves. Obama did, however, send the first message.

The White House announced the new account Monday afternoon on the White House blog. The account “will serve as a new way for President Obama to engage directly with the American people, with tweets coming exclusively from him,” Alex Wall, deputy director of online engagement for the Office of Digital Strategy, wrote.

As Mashable explained when @FLOTUS launched, @FLOTUS tweets are considered personal messages from the first lady while @MichelleObama is for campaigning and official White House business.

When the @POTUS account went live Monday morning, direct messaging to the account was accessible, Mother Jones reports. That feature has since been turned off. There is no date listed for when the account was launched.

The @POTUS account will be passed on to the next president, Wall explained via Twitter.

Given that the @FLOTUS and @POTUS accounts serve as the personal accounts for Michelle and Barack Obama, and their name accounts are the official political account, that will be reversed. Or perhaps they will give up on tweeting altogether.