A signature and a moment: how @USTreasury tweeted the new dollar bill

Making his mark on U.S. currency history, Secretary of @USTreasury Jack Lew debuted his new signature on Twitter — a signature that will begin to appear on all U.S. currency printed starting this fall. The Treasury Department revealed the news by tweeting out factoids, an up-close of the new signature and a behind-the-scenes photo of the Secretary himself giving his autograph.

You wouldn’t expect this to be terribly newsworthy, but the Secretary’s previous signature was much-commented on. President Obama even remarked on it in the press conference where he named Lew his nominee: “Jack assures me that he is going to work to make at least one letter legible in order not to debase our currency.”

The Tweet with the new signature was much-retweeted and seen across news sites, including Huffington Post, Politico, USA Today, Business Insider, and the Washington Post with about 35,000 impressions from these embedded tweets.

That day, @USTreasury gained nearly the largest single day’s growth in followers since Jack Lew was sworn in as Secretary of the Treasury at the end of February and since the start of the @USTreasury account.

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