Updated

If you follow President Obama on Twitter or are a friend of his on Facebook, it should come as no surprise that his tweets and status updates come from one of his staff members.

But that's about to change.

Obama for America (OFA), the president's re-election campaign team, announced Obama's followers would soon be hearing a lot more from the president on Twitter. Obama, who is known to be tech savvy, plans to periodically tweet his own campaign messages, which are usually sent by social media staffers. OFA will be managing the president's Facebook and Twitter accounts, but any tweets coming directly from the President will be signed "-BO."

So why the change? According to OFA, the president is counting on his supporters to "lead this organization from the grassroots up, helping to shape it as it grows." The campaign hopes the change will afford the president an opportunity to report on what he is doing on a daily basis and connect to his supporters, who will be driving his campaign.

When President Obama is not tweeting, his staffers will be posting daily updates from the campaign trail and using both Twitter and Facebook to get their message out, garner feedback, and ask for ideas from supporters to bolster efforts for Obama's re-election in 2012.

As of this writing, @BarackObama has well over 8 million followers.