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Although most people will have assumed that the @BarackObama account was staffed by members of his team and White House staff, it was easy to hope that a Blackberry-addicted new President might occasionally sneak a tweet in – especially given the account is always in the first-person, and given messages such as ‘Humbled’ on winning the Nobel Peace Prize.

But it turns out almost 2.7 million people are following the President’s team rather than the man himself, after he spoke in a Q&A session in Shanghai which was streamed on the internet. In it, he fielded a question about Twitter. His answer?

“I have never used Twitter but I’m an advocate of technology and not restricting internet access.”

It’s a pity this hasn’t been made clear on the account, or that he hasn’t been able to at least check in a couple of times to see what the fuss is about.

Interestingly, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs also claimed in July (incorrectly as it turned out), that Twitter was blocked on official White House computers.

It seems that social media hasn’t been quite as pervasive in the Obama administration as you might have assumed.

HT to Breaking News Online, Read Write Web and Techcrunch.

Interesting contrast between the attitudes of China and the U.S to Twitter at the moment.

In China, access has been stopped to Twitter (and new Microsoft search engine Bing). The likely reason is the anniversay of Tiananmen Square protest. However, like a lot of people analysing usage figures for Twitter, the Chinese authorities seem to have forgotten about Twitter clients, such as Seesmic Desktop, for the moment.

Compare that to the U.S – with the military unveiling a social media strategy for news from Afghanistan which includes Facebook, Youtube and Twitter. There’s an official Twitter account at www.twitter.com/usfora which currently has 2985 followers. There’s some more detail in a Wired article.