President Trump has four tweets; 14 million followers

Washington, January 21

In less than 12 hours after being inaugurated as the 45th President of the US, Donald Trump, an avid Twitter user, has as many as 14 million followers.

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In fact, his POTUS account was fast catching up with his personal Twitter handle @RealDonaldTrump where he has 20.9 million followers that he has earned in nearly eight years after he joined the microblogging site in March 2009.

At one of the three inaugural balls, Trump asked permission from his followers and supporters to continue to tweet. And all of them said yes. Trump said this would help him get around the "dishonest media," and this a way to get in touch with his supporters.

"Should I keep the Twitter going or not?" "I think so," he said. It is "a way of bypassing dishonest media," said the US President.

Till early this morning the official Twitter account of the President of the US was handled by Barack Obama, who passed on the baton to Trump exactly at noon. All the tweets of Obama in his capacity as the US President has now been archived under a new account @POTUS44.

At the time on archiving, Obama's official Twitter account had 13.9 million followers.

This is far less than the 80.9 million followers on his personal account. This account is run by Organising for Action staff.

Tweets from the President are signed -bo. By late in the night it jumped to 14.1 million followers. POTUS44 account is now being maintained by National Archives and Records Administration.

The brief introduction of Trump on his official Twitter account says that 45th President of the United States is "working on behalf of the American people to make our country great again. Tweets may be archived," it says.

An avid Twitter user, Trump of late has generated news from the series of tweets he writes every day, and mostly early in the morning.

On his personal account he follows 42 accounts mostly those of his family members, Trump organisations, a few journalist and Republican leaders.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who joined the microblogging site in January 2009 -- site less than three months after Trump – has 26.5 million followers.

He has tweeted – 13,800 -- far less than that of Trump.

Meanwhile, Twitter said as many as 12 million tweets were sent so far today related to the #Inauguration.

Those tweets peaked at 58,000 tweets sent per minute at 12.02pm EST, the moment Trump became the 45th President of the United States. —PTI