US president Barack Obama has finally joined social media platform Twitter – with an official presidential account.

Previously, all communications coming from the president came through the @BarackObama account, which is handled by his Organizing for Action staff.

Official communication from the White House is channeled through the @WhiteHouse account, and both feature tweets from Obama, signed as “-bo”.

The president’s new account takes a more general title under the handle @POTUS (which stands for President Of The United States), which will presumably pass on to whoever takes over the top job in the 2016 US elections.

The account is growing at a massive rate, having hit just under 130,000 followers in minutes.

The president’s first tweet pokes fun at the amount of time it’s taken to get his own account on the platform:

Hello, Twitter! It’s Barack. Really! Six years in, they’re finally giving me my own account. — President Obama (@POTUS) May 18, 2015

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