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Followers of @PresElectBiden Twitter handle soar, as Biden team rails against archiving of Trump's @POTUS account

This is a marked change from when the Trump administration inherited the accounts from President Barack Obama and his team

President-elect Joe Biden's new Twitter account made for the purpose of official social media communication as the 46th President of the United States is close to reaching a million followers with just over a day left for him to take office. Biden will be inaugurated on Wednesday, January 20, and is expected to take the oath of office at noon Eastern Time. Security in Washington DC is high as the FBI continues to arrest and charge rioters who stormed the Capitol building on January 6 as Congress convened to certify the results of the 2020 presidential elections.

The first tweet from Biden's new account, @PresElectBiden, was sent out on January 14, 7:15 PM Pacific Time and read, "Folks — This will be the account for my official duties as President. At 12:01 PM on January 20th, it will become @POTUS. Until then, I'll be using @JoeBiden. And while you're here, follow @FLOTUSBiden @SenKamalaHarris @SecondGentleman and @Transition46."

At the time of writing, the account had more than 932,000 followers and is growing at an average rate of roughly 30,000 followers per day, according to analytics firm Social Blade. Biden's personal account has more than 24 million followers and is growing each day, gaining roughly 100,000 followers each day. 

Biden's team has strongly opposed Twitter's decision not to transfer the followers of President Donald Trump's @POTUS account, which stands at more than 33 million. Instead, the current official POTUS and White House Twitter accounts (with over 60 million followers combined) will be archived. This is a marked change from when the Trump administration inherited the accounts from President Barack Obama and his team, which was the first time such a transition happened as the accounts were created during Obama's term.

Rob Flaherty, who is to become the Biden administration's digital strategy director, told Bloomberg that this will create a disadvantage for Biden's administration. He said, "If we don't end the day with the 12 million followers that Donald Trump inherited from Barack Obama, then they have given us less than they gave Donald Trump, and that is a failure." 

Flaherty had also tweeted his displeasure, writing, "There's a lot of ~~normal~~ people who follow the President in the same way they follow...The Rock or Demi Lovato. It's actually a pretty normal early behavior in joining a social network! It's why the account is a public good." He added, "Sure, plenty of rando bots and trolls, but also, plenty of folks who don't really engage in politics. Plenty of hate follows. Who knows! It's why Twitter moved the followers over from Obama to Trump! It's not a political account, it's the President's account." He then tweeted, "Anyway, the nice thing about Joe Biden is that he truly couldn't care less about Twitter followers. Or Twitter! But he does care about communicating with everyone in the country, whether they agree with him or not."

Twitter had updated in its blog on the transfer process, writing, "These institutional accounts will not automatically retain the followers from the prior administration. 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."

@PresElectBiden will accommodate the followers for Biden's presidency until Inauguration Day when Twiter will change it to @POTUS, and transfer the followers from the temporary account to the official POTUS account. Similarly, @Transition45 will take the @WhiteHouse handle, and Kamala Harris will take over the @VP account.