Who was the earliest President on Twitter?

BY LEN SCHIEFER
Chief Copy Editor

Firsts are often surprising, and the relationship of the Presidency to Twitter is one of those surprises. A few weeks ago, a story on MSN called George Washington the “first blogger” because of his prolific writing,[1] This would be surprising to some, because “blog” means “Web log,” and the Web obviously wasn’t around in the 18th century. You may know that Twitter was created in 2006[2]. You may then think, the first President on Twitter must have been George W. Bush. No, the question here is “Who was the earliest President on Twitter?”

The answer is very similar to the Washingtoon blog story. The earliest President on Twitter is John Quincy Adams, our 6th President, serving from 1825 to 1829. He was, after all, an Adams; his parents, John (the 2nd president) and Abigail, were voracious letter writers; his son Charles was also a famous writer. In 2009, the Massachusetts Historical Society started posting John Quincy Adams’ line-a-day diary entries on Twitter. Two hundred years ago, Adams, then an ambassador, knew to limit himself to 140 characters a day. Here’s a quote from the historical society’s website:

“On 27 June 1809, the U.S. Senate confirmed President James Madison’s appointment of John Quincy Adams (JQA) as minister plenipotentiary to Russia. On 5 August 1809, JQA set sail for St. Petersburg. In addition to writing long entries in one of his diary volumes, JQA also summarized each day of his trip in his line-a-day diary volume. Since 5 August 2009, the Massachusetts Historical Society has been posting John Quincy Adams’s line-a-day diary entries on Twitter, exactly 200 years after his journey across the Atlantic.“ [3]

Who was the earliest President on Twitter?