The smooth transition of power from one president to the next is one of the cornerstones of American democracy, but on Jan. 21, 2017, the 45th president of the United States will receive the keys to a unique and powerful asset — the official presidential social media accounts.
Barack Obama is the first US president to have a social media presence of any kind. The official White House YouTube channel was launched on Jan. 20, 2009 — the day of Obama’s inauguration — with the official Facebook page following a few months later.
The @POTUS Twitter handle didn’t come to being until May 2015, while the White House’s first Snapchat story was posted earlier this year.
Once Obama’s presidential term expires on Jan. 20, 2017, he will of course no longer be qualified to hold onto the @POTUS Twitter handle and other White House social media accounts, which will be wiped clean and handed over to the next president, according to a White House blog post.
The accounts will retain their followers but start with fresh timelines.
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Obama’s digital body of work won’t be simply discarded however. All tweets from the @POTUS handle will be transferred over to the newly created @POTUS44 account, which will be maintained by the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA).
The president’s Instagram and Facebook posts will also be shifted to new accounts bearing the number ’44’ in their titles, all under NARA’s supervision.
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Photos, videos and the 470,000+ petitions on the White House’s We The People website will also be archived with NARA.
Given the unprecedented nature of the presidential social media handover, the White House has taken the step of inviting members of the American public to submit proposals on how best to archive social media content for future use, as long as the solutions are “free and accessible to the general public, and constructive in spirit.”