Obama campaign says he will start tweeting

MINNEAPOLIS -- President Barack Obama is taking a more active role on Twitter, 140 characters at a time.

Obama's campaign said in a posting on its website Friday that Obama will start tweeting regularly, signing the personal ones "-BO."

The campaign said it will now manage both Obama's Twitter account and Facebook page.

The website posting also said that the changes "will give us new opportunities 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."

Obama has about 8.7 million followers on Twitter, making his the third most-followed account among Twitter users, according to the statistics website twittercounter.com.

Obama's avatar is now one of him smiling, with his 2012 campaign logo resting along the base of the avatar.

-- AP