With less than a month to go before U.S. President-elect Joe Biden takes office, the transition team is working hard to get things ready. One of those things is the official @POTUS Twitter account. As it turns out, the new administration is going to start out at zero followers, the social media company told the transition team.
To be clear, the @POTUS account will technically be a new account. You can look at the existing account and see that it was created in January 2017. When President Donald Trump took office, the existing @POTUS account was archived as @POTUS44, and whoever was following @POTUS ended up following both.
In 2016, the Trump admin absorbed all of President Obama"s Twitter followers on @POTUS and @WhiteHouse -- at Team 44"s urging.
— Rob Flaherty (@Rob_Flaherty) December 22, 2020
In 2020, Twitter has informed us that as of right now the Biden administration will have to start from zero. https://t.co/wj1R02SmiK
When Trump took office, the account had 13 million followers, and it"s now at 33.2 million. Joe Biden"s personal Twitter account is currently sitting at 21.6 million followers. @WhiteHouse, which is what @Transition46 will become, currently has 26 million followers.