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President Obama's new Twitter account broke a world record

obama smile happy
U.S. President Barack Obama smiles as he takes part in the Catholic-Evangelical Leadership Summit on Overcoming Poverty at Georgetown University in Washington May 12, 2015. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque

It took less than five hours for the official Twitter account of the President of the United States to reach 1 million followers.

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That broke a Guinness World Record formerly held by actor Robert Downey Jr., who hit 1 million in 23 hours and 22 minutes in April 2014, the folks at Guinness say.

This is not the President's first twitter account. There's also his account @BarackObama which has 59 million followers, but it's not really controlled or used by him anymore. The tweets are posted by other people working for "Organizing for Action." And the POTUS account isn't completely his either. It stays with the office. But the tweets are posted by him.

The map-making folks at CartoDB made a time-lapse video of the world-record-shattering event, showing the explosion of followers.

POTUS Twitter world record
CartoDB

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