Office of the Vice President Joins Twitter

Vice President Joe Biden has a new Twitter presence as @VP, the official channel of the Office of the Vice President. He is now one up on his boss, whose @BarackObama account is political and whose office does not have an official account. While much is being made of whether the verbal-gaffe-prone vice president will be Tweeting himself on this high-profile account, there is probably a more interesting backstory in chosen Twitter handle — and why Biden, who has long owned @JoeBiden, needed another outlet at all.

“VP” should belong to the office, and Biden’s tenure in that office is temporary, of course. The legalese-laden bio makes clear that is an official account. But why go there at all when there isn’t even a Twitter account for the Office of the President?

And then there is the matter of choosing the “@VP” handle. True, the two best alternatives were taken. The well-known shorthand reference to the vice president of the United States is “Veep” — but @Veep is a woman in Paris who has 41 followers and whose Tweets are protected. @VPBiden is a woman in North Dakota whose Twitter bio stresses that she is “…NOT JOE BIDEN! (emphasis her own). Even more curious: @VPBiden has exactly one follower and has Tweeted a mere 20 times — all of them just two days ago, on July 3, 2011.