President-elect, Barak Obama, a self-confessed BlackBerry addict, arguably won his way to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue because he was able to mobilize the bulk of his support from the 'YouTube Generation.' His masterful election campaign, headed by David Plouffe, focused on the web with the mybarakobama.com website and the many thousands of tweets to supporters on micro-blogging service Twitter, helped him generate a record $600 million in campaign donations from more than three million contributors.

Now, it seems the days of his affair with his beloved BlackBerry are sadly coming to an end. Aides informed the New York Times that he will unlikely continue to use the device, come is inauguration in Washington DC on January 20, 2009. The fear is that the device would be open to hackers which could potentially undermine national security. Another main reason would be that the communication and correspondence of the US President enters into the realm of public record. Former VP nominee, Sarah Palin is more than familiar with the risks of combining personal and state communications on her Yahoo email account.

It does seem a little ironic that the man who relied so heavily on new technology in accessing and broadening his voter base will give up the 130,000 friends he had generated on Twitter. The president-elect has yet to send out a last message to his fellow Tweeters, or how he will deal with the abrupt 'CrackBerry' cold-turkey, which it is often referred to by users, especailly from what must have become quite a strong dependency. Perhaps BlackBerry maker Research in Motion could help him with some sort of 12-step program.

On the bright side, let's hope that the pending appointment of a new Chief Technology Officer will help ease the come-down burden and along with the new site Change.gov site he will hopefully remember all the people that helped put him in the big house.