How Many Twitter Accounts Does Your President Have?

A president of a country can definitely be considered an open-minded and tech-aware progressive person when he or she has a Twitter account. After all, it is the most fashionable way to connect to citizens online these days. But what if a president actually has as many as two Twitter accounts? I really don’t know but I have a feeling that the Russian president Medvedev is sometimes overdoing his online activities.

He is extremely active online with a video blog, a Twitter account and his regular communications with Russian people online. But now he thinks it is still not enough: his Twitter account has already grown too personal so he is adding a new one – strictly official this time!

In fact, to keep all the followers, Medvedev is actually going to rename his existing account into a personal MedvedevRussia and next create a new one (still named KremlinRussia) to serve as an official outlet for president-related news. And the one that currently exists and has more than 120 thousand followers will continue to be a place for personal comments and opinions from the president.

This sounds reasonable since current subscribers have grown accustomed to the unofficial voice of the president there and the new one will be getting followers from scratch now. Obviously, the president will not actually have to deal with multi-account Twitter clients: it is only reasonable that his official account will be maintained by his administration while he himself will only be updating the personal one with comments and photos.

The entire project looks like a complicated multi-step procedure to me: right now I can see that both accounts exist on Twitter but MedvedevRussia has protected updates so before renaming KremlinRussia using this ID, it will also have to be renamed first to make the URL available. And I can’t help but wonder if some sophisticated hackers will be able to get control over the URL before it is claimed again by the president? The second account is promised to start updating as soon as next week so this procedure is to be implemented in the next few days.

The reason for the move is explained as follows: when the account was initially created, the prospective for Twitter in Russia was not clear and it was impossible to predict the extremely rapid growth and popularity of the online service among Russian citizens. Now things are more or less clear and it is obvious that in addition to informal communications, official source of information regarding president’s activities is needed.

This will also make life simpler for Medvedev as a real-life person after he resigns – he will still have a personal Twitter account that he will be able to use (or at least I think so) for whatever role in life he chooses afterwards. And that will be an account with a huge crowd of followers already!

Via (in Russian)