Barack Obama on Twitter

Barack Obama's Twitter account (@BarackObama) is the official Twitter account for United States President Barack Obama and is used for his election efforts. Obama also uses the White House's Twitter account (@WhiteHouse) for his presidential activities. , Obama's account had 16,505,044 followers, followed with 677,188 accounts and had posted 4,239 tweets.
Obama has used Twitter to promote legislation and support for his policies. The account held the record for following the most people. , Obama's account ranked 6th in terms of followers with 16,505,044 followers, and had posted 4,239 tweets. In the subsequent months, he was surpassed by Kevin Rose but retook the lead in August 2008 by a 56,791-56,482 margin. He was also ahead of Rose in November 2008 with 117,000 followers. As late as February 2009, Obama's account had almost double the number of followers of any other account, holding a 223,923-125,000 lead over CNN. However, by the beginning of March Stephen Fry had over 280,000 followers, giving him the worldwide lead.
On May 23, 2010 Obama's Twitter account ranked as the fourth most followed account with about 4 million followers. Three months later, Obama ranked fifth. Although as of May 16, 2011, @BarackObama was followed by 7.4 million people, including 28 world leaders, it was not followed by @WhiteHouse. His account became the third account to reach 10 million followers on September 10, 2011. As of March 6, 2012, his was the eighth most popular official celebrity Twitter account. , he ranked 6th. is his official account, although he also tweets through @WhiteHouse. Generally, @WhiteHouse is for his presidential administration and @BarackObama is for his election campaign staff. Following the 2008 United States presidential election, the Democratic National Committee was believed to have taken over the account and in a speech in November 2009, Obama stated "I have never used Twitter", although he had over 2.6 million followers. The @BarackObama account is "run by #Obama2012 campaign staff. Tweets from the President are signed -bo." Although his staff does most of his tweeting, Obama became active on the account in June 2011, tweeting under his own initials.
Obama has at various times held public forums in which he fielded questions posted on Twitter. On July 6, 2011, he participated in what was billed as "Twitter Presents Townhall @ the White House". The event was held in the East Room of the White House and was streamed online. Only tweeted questions about the economy and jobs were accepted for oral response by Obama. His average responses were over 2000 characters and when Speaker of the United States House of Representatives John Boehner tweeted "Where are the jobs?" to the hashtag #AskObama, it took Obama 3111 characters to respond. The event was moderated by Twitter executive Jack Dorsey, and Obama started the session with a sample tweet to himself through @WhiteHouse that said "in order to reduce the deficit, what costs would you cut and what investments would you keep - bo". Dorsey said afterwards that Twitter received over 110,000 #AskObama-hashtagged tweets. Boehner was quite active with his questions from the outset.
On July 29, 2011, during the United States debt-ceiling crisis, the account lost over 40,000 followers when the president asked "Americans Friday to call, email and tweet Congressional leaders to 'keep the pressure on' lawmakers in hopes of reaching a bipartisan deal to raise the ahead of an Aug. 2 deadline." During the day, he sent about 100 tweets that included the Twitter accounts of Congressional Republicans. Later in 2011, Obama used Twitter again to try to encourage the people to voice their opinion on legislation when he was attempting to pass the American Jobs Act. During the 2012 Republican Party presidential primaries, the candidates made Obamacare a derogatory word. and in response to this pattern, the Obama campaign tried to fight this through a Twitter campaign soliciting #ILikeObamacare hashtagged responses.
Controversies and mishaps
On January 5, 2009, Obama's campaign account @BarackObama was among several celebrity accounts that were hacked and domain hijacked. The hacker phished the password of a Twitter administrator's account, gaining access to other accounts to which he then changed the passwords, and subsequently offered access to accounts upon request at Digital Gangster. The case eventually led to a non-financial settlement with the Federal Trade Commission by Twitter.
In June 2011, Time ranked ABC News' tweet of an off the record comment by Obama during a September 2009 CNBC interview regarding Kanye West's interruption of Taylor Swift during the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards that month as one of the top ten Twitter controversies of the company's first five years. Obama described West as a "Jackass" while receiving makeup prior to the official interview. Since ABC and CNBC share a fiber optic line as a cost-saving measure, ABC had access to the feed. Although the September 2009 comments were made off the record, Obama affirmed them in April 2012, saying that he is a "Jackass", but a very talented one.
On July 4, 2011, Obama was the subject of a death hoax on Twitter when FOX News's Politics Twitter account (@foxnewspolitics) was hacked. However, the hackers were unfamiliar with Twitter and started their hoax messages with @BarackObama, thus only making the message appear in the Twitter timelines of those who follow both Fox News and the Presidential account. Eventually the hackers switched to hashtag references, increasing the visibility of their activities. FOX News acknowledged the breach and apologized.
Obama as a Twitter subject
Although both Obama and his Republican adversary Mitt Romney are active on Twitter and Twitter has "become an essential tool for campaigns", the Pew Research Center has determined that only about 13% of American adults have joined the site. Thus, Twitter's impact on the election is only "one slice of an enormous communication effort". However, its impact has grown significantly now that as many tweets are sent in 8 minutes as were sent on all of Election Day 2008. As of May 25, 2010, 48% of Obama's followers resided outside of the United States and 47% were female. At that time, the top five industries in which his followers were employed were 1. Hospitality, 2. Law, 3. Marketing/Public Relations, 4. Fashion and 5. Education. Measuring social influence has become a new consulting career opportunity. According to discussants on the PBS NewsHour, Obama has 5000 times as much social media influence as Romney; however, according to The Hill, Obama only has 12 times as much social media influence.
Obama campaign advisor David Axelrod (@davidaxelrod) has been quite vocal regarding Obama on Twitter. He has waged battle on Twitter with United States Senator Chuck Grassley (@ChuckGrassley) when the Senator called Obama "Stupid" via Twitter in a typo-filled tweet after the President stated his defense of the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010 against the United States Supreme Court, which was considering overturning it. Axelrod has also challenged the Mitt Romney campaign regarding Obama's job creation record and had a prominent Twitter dialogue with Romney aide Eric Fehrnstrom (@EricFehrn). On June 14, 2012, Axelrod served as a guest respondent for @BarackObama as live questions were received by the account.
Facebook
Barack Obama has over a million Facebook friends. He has been credited with winning the "facebook race" in the 2012 presidential election.<ref name="facey"/> This assessment is based on the fact that Obama is mentioned four times more than his main opponent Mitt Romney on the site.<ref name="facey"/>

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