President Barack Obama tweets his first tweet from his new @POTUS account from the Oval Office, May 18, 2015. (Official White House Photo by Lawrence Jackson) 
 
 Today, with a tweet from the Oval Office, President Obama launched @POTUS, the official Twitter account of the President of the United States. 
 
 Hello, Twitter! It's Barack. Really! Six years in, they're finally giving me my own account. — President Obama (@POTUS) May 18, 2015 
 
 The @POTUS Twitter account will serve as a new way for President Obama to engage directly with the American people, with tweets coming exclusively from him. President Obama is committed to making his Administration the most open and participatory in history, and @POTUS will give Americans a new venue to engage on the issues that matter most to them. 
 
 Looking for more ways to engage with the White House on Twitter? Be sure to check out all of our official accounts: 
 
 The White House: @WhiteHouse 
 
 Vice President Joe Biden: @VP 
 
 First Lady Michelle Obama: @FLOTUS 
 
 Dr. Jill Biden: @DrBiden 
 
 Live coverage from the White House: @WHLive 
 
 Press Secretary Josh Earnest: @PressSec 
 
 Senior Advisor Valerie Jarrett: @VJ44 
 
 Communications Director Jen Psaki: @Psaki44 
 
 White House updates in Spanish: @LaCasaBlanca 
 
 Chief Official White House Photographer: @PeteSouza 
 
 You can find a full list of official White House Twitter accounts here. ||||| President Obama using his BlackBerry, in 2010 
 
 UPDATE: Tuesday May 19, 2015, 4pm EST: Mother Jones can reveal that the former owner of @POTUS is Steve D'Alimonte, 33, a freelance multimedia producer living in Toronto. In 2008, "I was super into the West Wing," D'Alimonte said via phone from Canada. He joined Twitter at a time when "everything was available", he said, but he ended up using it "more as a voyeur" than as an active user. 
 
 That was until 2011, when D'Alimonte realized he should use his real name on Twitter so potential employers could find him, so he switched handle to @stevedalimonte. D'Alimonte says that's when he tried to to claim back his @POTUS account, which he had let lapse, but he wasn't allowed to get it back. (Twitter reclaims dormant accounts). And then? "I didn't think about it again until yesterday," he said. D'Alimonte sent Mother Jones several emails confirming the identity of his Twitter account from 2008 and 2009. Twitter did not respond to emailed questions about the account. 
 
 And the "Roy" from D'Alimonte's first tweet? That's his "early adopter" friend Roy Abraham (known online as "Roy Marvelous"), a New Zealander and avid social media guru currently living in Vancouver, who recommended that D'Alimonte get on Twitter early. 
 
 Here's my original article: 
 
 A social-media frenzy greeted President Barack Obama's announcement on Monday that he had "finally" joined Twitter with a verified @POTUS Twitter account. Of course, the president has long used the official @barackobama handle, run by his political group Organizing for Action (followers: 59.3 million), with the sign-off "-bo." But what was new, we were told, is that this account will be pure Barack Obama—a personal account, all his own. The White House says the president "launched" the @POTUS account from the Oval Office: 
 
 Hello, Twitter! It's Barack. Really! Six years in, they're finally giving me my own account. — President Obama (@POTUS) May 18, 2015 
 
 By the end of Monday, that tweet had been shared and favorited hundreds of thousands of times, and generated hundreds of news articles welcoming the "Tweeter-in-Chief." 
 
 But it turns out that this is not the first tweet sent from the @POTUS Twitter account, according to the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine. The first tweet preserved in the archive from the @POTUS account is a mysterious message about someone named "Roy": 
 
 According to the tweet's time stamp, it was sent on March 11, 2008. It reads: "wondering what Roy got me into now." Twitter started in 2006. This tweet was sent while George W. Bush was still in office. 
 
 At the time, the @POTUS account only had one follower. The archive has not preserved who that solitary follower was, but @POTUS was soon to gather another three: By the end of January 2009, @POTUS was broadcasting to four followers. 
 
 But then, sometime between 2009 and September 2013, the account went silent, and was locked down to outside viewers. This message appeared in various languages across the archive's 37 "captures" (as of Monday night). In English: "Only confirmed followers have access to @POTUS's Tweets and complete profile." Click the "Follow" button to send a follow request." 
 
 Who is Roy? And what mischief did he create for @POTUS? We may never know. But in the meantime, Mother Jones has reached out to the White House with a variety of questions, including: 
 
 Who owned and ran the @POTUS Twitter account prior to the White House? When did the White House come into possession of the account? Did any money change hands to get the account? Was Twitter involved in ensuring access to the account? Who is Roy? 
 
 We will update this post when we hear back. ||||| Image copyright WHITE HOUSE Image caption President Trump's first tweet on the @POTUS account showed this image 
 
 Much is written about the Herculean effort to move one family out of the White House and a new family in within the space of just a few hours. 
 
 But in our modern age, the digital moving trucks must also roar into action, as prime presidential online real estate gets a makeover, and eight years of President Obama's social media chat is confined to the national archives. 
 
 Let’s start with WhiteHouse.gov, the official website for the President, which as of noon Friday, has a brand new look - and has already provoked mild panic. 
 
 Many noted that pages about climate change were swiftly deleted. So too were pages about LGBT rights and various science policies. 
 
 But, let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Pages about everything were deleted as what was essentially Obama’s homepage was replaced with Trump’s. 
 
 That means posts about any former policy positions no longer exist on the White House website if you follow the original links. 
 
 So while the web address pointing to the White House’s position on climate change no longer works, the same can be said about Obama’s pages relating to the economy. Unpredictable as he is, no-one is suggesting Donald Trump is about to describe “money” as a hoax. 
 
 That said, on the new whitehouse.gov, a search for “military” will yield 154 results. “Climate change”? None. 
 
 Nervous internet sleuths have found one reference to climate change, a promise to lift the "harmful and unnecessary policies such as the Climate Action Plan and the Waters of the US rules". 
 
 Make of that what you will. People on Twitter certainly are. 
 
 Also wiped clean was the White House's petition website. On Friday, by 4pm in DC, only two petitions were posted on the site. The first demanded the release of the President's tax returns. The other demanded he put his businesses in a blind trust. If either petition gets 100,000 signatures, the White House has to provide a response - at least, that was the rule the previous administration set itself. 
 
 Image copyright Getty Images Image caption Trump reportedly gave up his cell phone upon assuming the presidency 
 
 From @POTUS to @POTUS44 
 
 Speaking of which, it’s all change on Twitter too. 
 
 From today @POTUS - President of the United States - has been taken over by the Trump team. All previous tweets from Obama’s team - and Obama himself - have been deleted from that account, but archived under @POTUS44. The 44 relating of course to the fact Obama was the 44th US President. 
 
 The tweets were not, as a smattering of people blurted out, “deleted by Trump” once he had control of the account. 
 
 Twitter removed them - and that's because scrubbing the account of Obama’s tweets is a smart move for everyone involved. Had Twitter left the old tweets in place you’ll find yourself seeing people retweeting Obama’s words but with Trump’s identity attached, a recipe for misinformation disaster. 
 
 Trump’s first tweet on @POTUS posted a picture and a link to his inaugural address - the full text of which was posted on Facebook. Is Trump having a change of heart over his social network of choice? 
 
 Maybe. Facebook certainly offers the chance to speak more clearly at length, and, as the leader of the free world, it would be more useful to post to an audience of almost two billion rather than Twitter’s rather limited 300m. 
 
 We won’t know for sure until about 3am, DC time, tomorrow morning. Everyone will be surely waiting for those twilight hours to see if the President springs back into life posting his thoughts on his own personal account, @realDonaldTrump. 
 
 Follow Dave Lee on Twitter @DaveLeeBBC and on Facebook ||||| President Obama sent out his first tweet today from @POTUS, an account that has already racked up 1.15 million followers in less than seven hours. 
 
 Hello, Twitter! It's Barack. Really! Six years in, they're finally giving me my own account. — President Obama (@POTUS) May 18, 2015 
 
 Obama received a warm welcome from many on Twitter, including former President Bill Clinton (who follows 10 people, including Hillary Clinton, but not yet Obama). 
 
 Welcome to @Twitter, @POTUS! One question: Does that username stay with the office? #askingforafriend — Bill Clinton (@billclinton) May 18, 2015 
 
 Obama’s response (and third tweet from the account) was perfect. 
 
 Good question, @billclinton. The handle comes with the house. Know anyone interested in @FLOTUS? — President Obama (@POTUS) May 18, 2015 
 
 If Hillary Clinton wins the White House, the fate of the @FLOTUS Twitter account is unclear; after all, it’s not yet been determined what a female president’s husband would be called. It is possible to change Twitter usernames without affecting existing followers, direct messages or @replies. 
 
 Bill Clinton has weighed in with one suggestion. 
 
 “My Scottish friends say I should be called ‘first laddie’ because it’s the closest thing to ‘first lady,’ ” he said in a 2007 interview with Oprah Winfrey. “I’m not so worried about what I’m called as what I’m called upon to do.” 
 
 More from MarketWatch ||||| WASHINGTON — When President Obama sent his inaugural Twitter post from the Oval Office on Monday, the White House heralded the event with fanfare, posting a photograph of him perched on his desk tapping out his message on an iPhone. 
 
 The @POTUS account — named for the in-house acronym derived from “President of the United States” — would “serve as a new way for President Obama to engage directly with the American people, with tweets coming exclusively from him,” a White House aide wrote that day. 
 
 But it took only a few minutes for Mr. Obama’s account to attract racist, hate-filled posts and replies. They addressed him with racial slurs and called him a monkey. One had an image of the president with his neck in a noose. 
 
 The posts reflected the racial hostility toward the nation’s first black president that has long been expressed in stark terms on the Internet, where conspiracy theories thrive and prejudices find ready outlets. But the racist Twitter posts are different because now that Mr. Obama has his own account, the slurs are addressed directly to him, for all to see. ||||| Barack Obama last night shattered the record for fastest time to reach one million followers on Twitter, after his new verified account @POTUS reached the figure in less than five hours. 
 
 The US President already has the account @BarackObama , which has amassed nearly 60 million followers. However, the new @POTUS account is associated with the presidential office - or as Obama puts it: "The handle comes with the house." 
 
 Obama's latest social media achievement beats a record previously held by Ironman star Robert Downey Jr., a feat the movie star achieved in 23 hours and 22 minutes back in April 2014.Downey Jr.'s Twitter debut was recognised in the 2015 edition of the Guinness World Records book. 
 
 "The @POTUS Twitter account will serve as a new way for President Obama to engage directly with the American people, with tweets coming exclusively from him," wrote the White House Deputy Director of Online Engagement for the Office of Digital Strategy, Alex Wall, in a blog post. 
 
 Twitter's official account for government and politics statistics earlier this morning released an animated diagram showing how the President's new account quickly amassed followers across the globe. To view the diagram, click here.
– President Obama has officially entered the 21st century: He has his very own Twitter account, @POTUS. As of this writing, there's only one tweet on it: "Hello, Twitter! It's Barack. Really! Six years in, they're finally giving me my own account." As for the bio section of the account, it describes him as a father first: "Dad, husband, and 44th President of the United States." Meanwhile, @WhiteHouse features a picture of Obama with his phone, captioned: "President Obama. In the Oval Office. Tweeting." He's also been welcomed to Twitter by his wife and his VP, among others. The White House says the account "will serve as a new way for President Obama to engage directly with the American people, with tweets coming exclusively from him."