According to CNN, digital history was made in early 2010. Then President Obama became the first sitting U.S. president to personally “tweet” a message on the social networking site. Well, he pushed the button.“Welcome to Twitter, Mr. President – I’ll follow you if you follow me,” Tony Fratto, a former George W. Bush spokesman, joked to CNN by e-mail.
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Aides to former President Bush told CNN that Mr. Bush never published a tweet, and they happily crowned Mr. Obama as the first tweeting President.
But it was thought unlikely that the president would be doing much tweeting in office. White House personnel, except for a couple of top aides, were restricted from using social media sites like Facebook and Twitter. “There are security concerns with White House computers, and administration officials are also not supposed to be ‘tweeting on taxpayer time.'”
During a trip to China in 2009, President Obama admitted, “Let me say that I have never used Twitter.”In response to a question from a Chinese student about using Twitter freely in China, Mr. Obama continued. “I noticed that young people – they’re very busy with all these electronics. My thumbs are too clumsy to type in things on the phone,” he said, clearly disappointing some of his techie supporters.
Tweeted into Contributing
And after the @BarackObama account took a brief respite from the 2008 election, Gawker.com poked fun by saying his followers had been, “twittered into contributing money and time, and then passed over for more presidential means of communication. Like, say, press conferences.”
By contrast, the current U.S. President, Donald Trump has sent well over 40,000 messages from the microblogging service. Estimates suggest that free media coverage of his Twitter posts are worth $5 billion in advertising.
Mr. Trump used Twitter effectively to promote his campaign, communicate policy goals and attack opponents as part of a systematic campaign ahead of the 2016 US Presidential elections — a new study reveals. The study shows how online presence on social media platforms is a crucial component of modern politics.