@POTUS Social Media to Pass From Obama to His Successor

The @POTUS social media handle on Twitter created during President Barack Obama's time in office will pass on to the new president, along with 11 million followers.

Kori Schulman, special assistant to the president and deputy chief digital officer, said a new @POTUS44 handle will be created to retain Obama's tweets and remain accessible to the public.

The new president will also get control of the White House's Instagram and Facebook accounts, including username, URL and current followers. Obama's past posts on those accounts will also be moved to new sites, Schulman said.

"Since Obama is the first commander-in-chief to have a presence on most of these apps, there's not much in the way of precedent for figuring out how it's all supposed to work," said Chris Welch of The Verge. "So the White House developed some of its own."

The National Archives and Records Administration will maintain the online posts, along with context from the We the People and White House.gov sites. along with videos and photos, Schulman said.

"Looking back over the past eight years, our digital footprint reflects some broader changes in the ways people consume news and information and engage with the world around them online," said Schulman. "In 2009, in addition to rolling out a revamped site featuring a blog, RSS, and an email list, we joined Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, Vimeo, iTunes and even MySpace."

"In 2011, we launched We the People, a platform for citizens to petition the White House. In 2013, the First Lady posted her first photo on Instagram. In 2015, President Obama sent his first tweet from @POTUS. In 2016, the White House debuted an official story on Snapchat for the State of the Union. This digital infrastructure is an asset not just for the next president but for all future presidents to build off of."

Fortune magazine's Kia Kokalitcheva said the White House is also calling for submissions of ideas to archive the administration's data as well. Kokalitcheva said the move comes in the "spirit of open source — an important movement the tech industry founded on the idea that openly sharing data and tools can ultimately make them better …"

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