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Joe Biden takes over @POTUS Twitter account

January 21, 2021 01:08 IST

Joe Biden on Wednesday took over the official @POTUS Twitter account of the President of the United States after his inauguration.

IMAGE: Jill Biden kisses US President Joe Biden after he was sworn in as the 46th President of the United States on the West Front of the US Capitol in Washington. Photograph: Kevin Lamarque/Reuters

The 78-year-old veteran Democratic leader's Twitter account @PresElectBiden transformed into @POTUS after he took the oath of office at the West Front of the US Capitol as the 46th President of the United States in a historic but scaled down ceremony under the unprecedented security umbrella of thousands of security personnel.

POTUS is the official acronym for President of the United States; FLOTUS refers to the First Lady.

 

Twitter transferred institutional accounts such as @POTUS, @FLOTUS, @VP and @WhiteHouse to the Biden administration after the inauguration.

These accounts are reserved for the official government use by the current administration as they do not belong to any individual.

When previous president Donald Trump took the office in 2017, then-President Barack Obama's official accounts were transferred to him with his followers intact.

This time, these official accounts have lost tens of millions of followers. However, those dropped will receive notifications that they can follow them.

As per Twitter, the users are given a choice to whether follow the new accounts or not.

Trump's @POTUS account has been archived as @POTUS45 in the same way Obama's account was archived as @POTUS44.

On January 15, Biden's Twitter account had tweeted that the account will become the official account of the US President on January 20.

“Folks, This will be the account for my official duties as President. At 12:01 pm on January 20th, it will become @POTUS. Until then, I'll be using @JoeBiden. And while you're here, follow @FLOTUSBiden @SenKamalaHarris @SecondGentleman and @Transition46,” it had said.

Kamala Harris, soon after she was sworn-in as America's first woman Vice President during a historic inauguration at the West Front of the Capitol, tweeted from her official Twitter account soon after the inauguration.

“Ready to serve," she said in the tweet.

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