Back in November of last year, President Obama admitted that he had never actually used Twitter despite having one of the most popular accounts. The @barackobama account has over 2 million followers and has tweeted things such as “Humbled” after it was announced that he had won the Nobel Peace Prize, but that was actually just one of his staffers tweeting from the account, apparently. To plenty of people that wasn’t a huge surprise, but it was still a bit disappointing to destroy at least the illusion that it was him sending these messages. Today, President Obama finally tweeted.
His first tweet wasn’t from the @barackobama account, but rather it was from the @redcross account. Even stranger was the actual tweet: “President Obama and the First Lady are here visiting our disaster operation center right now.” Yes, he tweeted in third person. The next tweet on the Red Cross account confirmed that it was the President who sent that tweet: “President Obama pushed the button on the last tweet. It was his first ever tweet!”
Obviously, this tweet was a way of showing his support for what the Red Cross is doing to help people in Haiti following the devastating earthquakes there last week. Though it might have been better for him to tweet from his account with over 2 million followers about the relief rather than the Red Cross’ which has a “mere” 50,000 followers.
Mobile donations to the Red Cross alone have already surpassed $10 million, with overall mobile donations now past $20 million.
