BARACK OBAMA WILL personally tweet from his Twitter account as the campaign for his re-election next year hots up.

Up until now the Twitter and Facebook accounts of the 44th US president were managed by his 2008 election campaign staff and then White House staff but ahead of next year’s election, staff at the Obama 2012 headquarters are to take over @BarackObama, which has some 8.6million followers, and the president’s Facebook page

Obama himself will be personally tweeting with messages from him signed off “-BO.”

In recent years, Obama’s Twitter account has been used to tweet news of his activities but has been managed by his communications team at the White House.

The  reason for the change according to the campaign, is “to make the most of these channels, using them not only to report what the President is doing every day but to connect to the millions of supporters who will be driving this campaign.”

Tech Crunch reports that the upcoming US presidential election is likely to be about Twitter which has more mass appeal than it did four years ago when the election was very much centred on Facebook.

Opposition Republican candidates are already clashing on the Twittersphere with Tim Pawlenty hitting back at fellow Republican nominee hopeful Mitt Romney, according to the LA Times. It follows the pair’s clash over healthcare at a Republican primary debate on Monday.