President Joe Biden's personal Twitter profile has gained more than 15 million followers in the months since the November 3 election.
A snapshot of Biden's social media account taken the day of the election by the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine shows he had 11.9 million followers. That number has now grown to 27.2 million as of Wednesday—a rise of roughly 15.3 million followers.
Former President Donald Trump's once-thriving Twitter account remains silenced after it was suspended on January 8 due to the risk of it inciting further violence in the wake of the Capitol Building riot three days prior. It had 88.7 million followers.
Since being sworn into office on January 20, the Biden administration has overturned, altered or pledged to change Trump-era policies on immigration, global climate change, healthcare and job creation. It has promised to expand the COVID vaccine supply and send some directly to retail pharmacies. Consistent press briefings have also resumed.
While Trump had used his vast Twitter presence to attack political rivals and lash out at the media, Biden's digital team has been significantly more restrained.
The majority of the president's posts are now shared by the official @POTUS account, which had attracted 6.8 million followers as of Wednesday. It started from scratch on January 20, when the previous administration's accounts were formally archived.
Twitter announced in a blog post on January 14 that "institutional" government accounts would not automatically retain followers from the Trump administration.
Before it was reset, the official @POTUS account had about 33 million followers, while the White House profile had roughly 26 million. Accounts from the Trump administration were archived, and the new White House profile now has 4.5 million followers.
In the prior presidential transition from Barack Obama's final term, Trump had reportedly gained about 12 million followers from the @POTUS account alone.
Twitter's new approach to the transition annoyed some of Biden's digital team, who said that it would leave the incoming administration at an automatic disadvantage.
Rob Flaherty, the White House new digital director, told Bloomberg: "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."
Tracking data from the social media analytics company Social Blade suggests that both of Biden's Twitter accounts—@JoeBiden and @POTUS—have been attracting tens of thousands of followers on a daily basis, sometimes well over 100,000 in a day.
Over the past 30 days, @JoeBiden has gained 4.8 million new followers. The @POTUS handle, meanwhile, has managed to amass approximately 6.7 million, the Social Blade statistics said. The White House has been connected for comment by Newsweek.
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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
About the writer
Jason Murdock is a staff reporter for Newsweek.
Based in London, Murdock previously covered cybersecurity for the International Business Times UK ... Read more
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