‘It’s Barack. Really!’ After six years as president, Obama gets own Twitter account

President Barack Obama sent his first tweet from his very own account on Twitter on Monday, quickly amassing a million followers in five hours, the latest of many White House efforts to amplify his message with social media.

“Hello, Twitter! It’s Barack. Really! Six years in, they’re finally giving me my own account,” Obama tweeted from his verified @POTUS account.

A Twitter spokesman could not immediately confirm whether Obama had set a record. According to Guinness World Records, the fastest pace to a million followers was set by actor Robert Downey Jr. in 23 hours and 22 minutes in April last year.

Obama and his advisers pioneered the use of social media like Twitter and Facebook in the 2008 presidential campaign and have embraced their use in the White House as well.

As media attention has increasing shifted toward the next year presidential campaign, the White House has boosted its use of social media to break and shape news.

On Monday, the White House tweeted a short video of Obama sending his tweet from the Oval Office, perched on the edge of the historic Resolute presidential desk.

He used a White House iPhone to send the tweet, not his own high-security custom Blackberry. “I can’t use phones with recorders in them,” he explained on “Jimmy Kimmel Live” earlier this year.

It’s not the first time Obama has tweeted. He has occasionally signed tweets from the @WhiteHouse account (6.2 million followers) with his initials, “-bo” and also has used @BarackObama (59 million followers), an account run by Organising for Action, Obama’s former campaign team.