Disillusionment as Obama admits he doesn’t twitter

More than 2.6 million people who follow Barack Obama on Twitter have been disillusioned to learn that the supposedly tech-savvy US President has never used the micro-blogging site, despite it being a staple of his presidential campaign.
 
Obama told 400 students in Shanghai yesterday that he has never tweeted, despite Twitter's head office verifying that the @BarackObama account was his own and not a hoax.
 
"I have never used Twitter, but I'm an advocate of technology and not restricting internet access," said Obama in a town-hall style meeting in which he criticised internet censorship. "My thumbs are too clumsy to type in things on the phone."
 
President Obama is currently the fourth most popular person who twitters - or, rather, who has someone twitter for him - with almost 2.7 million people following his micro-blogs. Only actor-producer Ashton Kutcher (3.98 million), singer Britney Spears (3.78 million) and comedian-turned-chat show host Ellen DeGeneres (3.73 million) have more followers.

Not surprisingly, the admission by the world's most famous Blackberry user that he did not, after all, tweet "We just made history" after his election victory or "Humbled" on winning the Nobel Peace Prize, has dismayed Obama's followers.

"Shocking, given that his account with 2.6m followers has even been 'verified' by Twitter headquarters," said Vicki Kolovou, a web developer from Athens, Greece. "I am sad," said Funuhu from Japan. Meanwhile the phrase "I have never used" was a popular 'trending' topic on Twitter this morning.

So who does twitter his tweets? It seems they have either been ghost-written by White House staffers or the staff of the Democratic National Committee, which has run the Twitter account since Obama was elected.

The revelation comes just two months after The First Post reported that questions were being raised about whether Obama received a ghost-writer's help with his much-lauded memoir, Dreams From My Father. ·