Barack Obama and Bill Clinton Use Twitter Like the Rest of Us -- To Talk Trash

President Barack Obama has had his own Twitter account for less seven hours and somebody’s already looking to snag it from him.

Former President Bill Clinton tweeted at Obama Monday afternoon, asking if the president’s new Twitter handle stays with the office. That is, does @POTUS belong to Obama, or whoever’s sitting as president?

https://twitter.com/billclinton/status/600389785769881600

Clinton wrote that he was “asking for a friend” (and we have a pretty good idea who that “friend” might be).

Obama was quick with a witty response: “Good question, @billclinton. The handle comes with the house. Know anyone interested in @FLOTUS?”

https://twitter.com/POTUS/status/600407380279566336

Nice!

It sure is fun to watch presidents (or their social media interns) banter on Twitter. Obama’s new account got a lot of attention Monday; he added 1.15 million followers in about seven hours.

One other thing of note: Obama sent his first tweet under the new username with an iPhone, a bit of information notable in that the president is famous for using his BlackBerry for security reasons. Turns out, the iPhone is owned by the president’s office. So he didn’t use his own phone.

Looks like Obama’s BlackBerry still runs the show.

And one more note: This is all great for Twitter. The company is pretty successful when it comes to getting its product into the hands of influential users. Having presidents banter back and forth on the service doesn’t hurt from a publicity standpoint.

Here’s a look at how people around the world reacted to the president’s new account on Twitter.

https://twitterdata.cartodb.com/viz/452f2280-fd96-11e4-b6e7-7054d21a95e5/embed_map

This article originally appeared on Recode.net.

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