WASHINGTON, Nov. 1 (UPI) — For the first time in American history, when the president leaves office in January he will hand over a lot more than just the keys to the Oval Office and the codes to the nuclear football.
When President Barack Obama departs on Jan. 20, he will also unlock and relinquish his digital kingdom — Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and other digital space — to the next commander in-chief.
The social channels have been instrumental in the Obama administration’s communications strategy over the last eight years. Obama is the first president to occupy the president’s official account on Twitter (@POTUS), and Michelle Obama(@FLOTUS) the first lady’s.
And in the coming weeks, all of the administration’s digital domains will go through a complex transition process.
“Given the unprecedented nature and scale of the digital transition, we anticipate we’ll learn a lot along the way,” White House Deputy Chief Digital Officer Kori Schulman outlined Tuesday.
When Jan. 20 arrives, the Obamas will have to surrender their Twitter accounts to the next president and first lady (or gentleman, in the case of Bill Clinton).
The White House detailed Tuesday how some of that transition will work. Those accounts will effectively be cleaned out and archived, and prepped for the next occupiers of those offices.
“The [@POTUS] account will retain its more than 11 million followers, but start with no tweets on the timeline,” Schulman said.
All of the items that had been on Obama’s account will be transferred to a new page, @POTUS44, which will act as the official archive of his Twitter presidency.
Other Twitter handles that will be passed onto the new administration include @VP, @WhiteHouse and @PressSec.
The president and first lady have also made heavy use of their Facebook accounts, as well. In fact, Obama was the first president to conduct a live broadcast via the social channel. Now, all the content of the president’s official Facebook activity will also be moved to new a “44” archive page.
“On Facebook, the incoming White House will gain access to the White House username, URL, and retain the followers, but will start with no content on the timeline,” Schulman wrote.
White House Accounts
The administration has to digitally preserve two separate accounts associated with the president — one for Obama’s personal pages and one for the official White House pages.
The official White House accounts will be cleaned and effectively reset for the next administration. The activity posted under Obama will also find new archive homes — Facebook.com/ObamaWhiteHouse and Instagram.com/ObamaWhiteHouse, for example.
“We’ll follow a similar approach with other official accounts on platforms including Medium, Tumblr, and YouTube,” Schulman wrote.
WhiteHouse.gov
Like the two preceding administrations, Obama’s full White House website will also be transferred and archived on the Internet at the URL ObamaWhiteHouse.gov.
“The incoming White House will receive the WhiteHouse.gov domain and all content that has been posted to WhiteHouse.gov during the Obama administration will be archived with the National Archives and Records Administration,” Schulman said.
Other Accounts
Thousands of hours of video footage and thousands of photographs will also be archived in a similar fashion and made available to the public, pursuant to the Presidential Records Act.
Because the Obama administration’s digital history is so large and involves so many elements, the White House is also seeking input from the American people on ways to store it, share it and preserve it.
“We’re inviting the American public — from students and data engineers, to artists and researchers — to come up with creative ways to archive this content and make it both useful and available for years to come,” Schulman wrote. “The White House will make our social media data available early to people who are interested in building something for the public.”
