Twitter lays out transition plan of official White House accounts at inauguration
Jan 15, 2021
Washington [US], January 15 : Twitter has laid out its action plan on Thursday (local time) on transitioning institutional accounts from the current White House to the incoming administration of President-elect Joe Biden.
Sputnik reported that the platform explained it was working with the US government to support the archival and transition of Twitter accounts across administrations.
The spouse of incoming Vice President Kamala Harris, Doug Emhoff, will assume a newly created account named @SecondGentleman.
"As President-elect Biden is sworn in on January 20, 2021, Twitter will facilitate the transfer of institutional White House Twitter accounts, including @WhiteHouse, @POTUS, @VP, @FLOTUS, and @PressSec," Twitter said in a blog post.
The official account of President-elect Biden will become the POTUS (President of the United States) account, the Biden-Harris Presidential Transition account will become the White House account. The same will become of the accounts of the Vice President, First Lady and Press Secretary.
"First, Twitter will transfer current institutional accounts to the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) where the Tweets and account history will remain publicly available and the account usernames will be updated to reflect their archived status," it added.
The Trump administration's @POTUS account will be publicly archived as @POTUS45, just as the Barack Obama-led administration's account was archived as @POTUS44.
People on Twitter will be able to watch the transition of power taking place in real-time as accounts for the White House, President, Vice President, First Lady and White House Press Secretary inherit their new institutional usernames: @Transition46 will become @WhiteHouse, @PresElectBiden will become @POTUS, @SenKamalaHarris will become @VP, @FLOTUSBiden will become @FLOTUS, and @PressSecPsaki will become @PressSec. The Tweets, account history, and followers will see transition between these accounts, the blog post stated further.
These institutional accounts will not automatically retain the followers from the prior administration, the platform said.
"People on Twitter who previously followed institutional White House Twitter accounts, or who currently follow relevant Biden or Harris Twitter accounts, will receive in-app alerts and other prompts that will notify them about the archival process, as well as give them the option to follow the new administration's Twitter accounts," Twitter said.
