page_title: Barack Obama on social media
section_title: Account usage history
hierarchical_section_title: Barack Obama on social media / Twitter / Account usage history
caption_attribution_description: English: Twitter Town Hall audience members on July 6, 2011 tweeting questions to w:Barack Obama
context_page_description: Barack Obama won the 2008 United States presidential election on November 4, 2008. During campaign, by using social media and mobilizing the general public online, Obama was able to raise awareness and financial support of his campaign. Obama used over 15 social networking sites.
  The topic of Barack Obama's usage of social media in his political campaigns, including podcasting, Twitter, Myspace, Facebook, and YouTube has been compared to the adoption of radio, television, MTV, and the Internet in slingshotting his presidential campaign to success and as thus has elicited much scholarly inquiry. In the 2008 presidential campaign, Obama had more "friends" on Facebook and Myspace and more "followers" on Twitter than his opponent John McCain.
  Obama's usage of the wider Internet has often since been compared to Franklin D. Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy's adoption of the radio and television media, respectively, in the history of communication between the White House and the American public.
context_section_description: @BarackObama was launched on March 5, 2007 at 16:08:25. It is his official account, although he also tweeted through @WhiteHouse which is usually used by the presidential administration, while @BarackObama was for his election campaign staff. @WhiteHouse predates the Presidency of Barack Obama, since it was created on April 21, 2007. Following the 2008 United States presidential election, the Democratic National Committee was believed to have taken over the account and in a speech in November 2009, Obama stated "I have never used Twitter", although he had over 2.6 million followers. The @BarackObama account is "run by #Obama2012 campaign staff. Tweets from the President are signed -bo." Although his staff does most of his tweeting, Obama became active on the account in June 2011, tweeting under his own initials, beginning with the father's day message "Being a father is sometimes my hardest but always my most rewarding job..."
  Obama has at various times held public forums in which he fielded questions posted on Twitter. On July 6, 2011, he participated in what was billed as "Twitter Presents Townhall @ the White House". The event was held in the East Room of the White House and was streamed online. Only written questions on the site about the economy and jobs were accepted for oral response by Obama. His average responses were over 2000 characters and when Speaker of the United States House of Representatives John Boehner tweeted "Where are the jobs?" to the hashtag #AskObama, it took Obama 3111 characters to respond. The event was moderated by Twitter executive Jack Dorsey, and Obama started the session with a sample tweet to himself through @WhiteHouse that said "in order to reduce the deficit, what costs would you cut and what investments would you keep – bo". Dorsey said afterwards that Twitter received over 110,000 #AskObama-hashtagged tweets. Boehner was quite active with his questions from the outset. Some in the media proposed May 24, 2012, as the date when Obama became the first President to respond to questions on Twitter.
  On July 29, 2011, during the United States debt-ceiling crisis, the account lost over 40,000 followers when the president asked "Americans Friday to call, email and tweet Congressional leaders to 'keep the pressure on' lawmakers in hopes of reaching a bipartisan deal to raise the nation's $14.3 trillion debt limit ahead of an August 2 deadline." During the day, he sent about 100 tweets that included the Twitter accounts of Congressional Republicans. Later in 2011, Obama used Twitter again to try to encourage the people to voice their opinion on legislation when he was attempting to pass the American Jobs Act.
caption: Audience members at the July 6, 2011 Twitter Town hall meeting tweeting questions to Barack Obama
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