So President Obama doesn’t Twitter? Does that come as a big surprise? He made the announcement to a group of Chinese students this week in Shanghai that he never used Twitter. This sent the Twitter Trends on a rampage and people were upset, shocked and in disbelief:

• @meredithwrogers “Obama probably shouldn’t have let it be known that he’s never used twitter. Web geeks are having a hissyfit.”
• @techpresident “Twitterverse is Shocked, SHOCKED Obama Admitted to Never Using Twitter.”
• @netWire “Shocking, given that his account with 2.6 million followers has even been “verified” by Twitter headquarters’ !!! #Obama”
• @HirokiJpn “I have never used Twitter” said Obama. Hahaha then, who are you the one I’m following?”
• @Inap “So Obama never used Twitter himself? Shocking. Did anyone really think he was posting on his own?! Should’ve been clear about it tho’.”
• @BuzzEdition “WHOA…I thought Obama HAD used twitter…so sad now…..”
• @Amadeus3000 “I thought he used his account himself in early campaign days..”
• @trevorevans “Hmm I thought @BarackObama used it during the election.”
• @funuhu “Shocking! I am sad.”

I’m surprised anyone actually is shocked by this news. Think about it. When you exceed 2.6 million followers can you really expect that the celebrity you are following actually writes his own tweets and replies to follower tweets? It’s called broadcasting. You can’t engage in social media when you are using the channel as a blast fax.

photo credit: Jon Åslund

Twitter did ‘verify’ that the account belonged to the President, but the question is, “who is pulling the Tweet strings behind his back?” The tweets are still very ‘personal’ and appear to be coming from Mr. Obama. Perhaps a bit of disclosure is needed and the true Tweeter needs to step up for transparency sake. Or at least the guy feeding stuff into the Twit-O-matic needs to admit he’s just feeding the machine.