How Twitter will transit presidential accounts after Biden’s inauguration
The current versions of those will be archived under different names
Twitter has revealed details about how it will transit official White House accounts after President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris officially take over their duties on January 20th.
The institutional accounts that will be transferred to the Biden administration include @POTUS, @VP, @WhiteHouse, @FLOTUS, @PressSec and @LaCasaBlanca, reports Engadget.
The current versions of those will be archived under different names, including all of the tweets, and Twitter will transfer them to the National Archives and Records Administration. When Barack Obama left office in 2017, the then @POTUS account was archived as @POTUS44. Similarly, the Trump administration's @POTUS account will live on as @POTUS45.
Several accounts from the Biden camp will then take over those usernames. Twitter will convert @Transition46 to @WhiteHouse, @PresElectBiden to @POTUS and so on. One username that won't make the transition is @SecondLady. Instead, Harris' husband, Douglas Emhoff, will use an account called @SecondGentleman. Twitter will archive @SecondLady as @SecondLady45, and the current handle won't be in use for the time being.
Unlike the 2017 transition, the new versions of those institutional handles won't automatically hang on to their existing followers. Users who follow those accounts will see alerts and prompts about the switch, along with the suggestion to follow the new accounts.
Live streams of the inauguration ceremony will be available through Twitter's US Elections Hub, as well as the @JCCIC and @BidenInaugural accounts. The hub will include lists, moments and recommendations of accounts to follow.
