Jonathan Stray

Indonesian President Joins Twitter

Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono reportedly joined the Twitter microblogging bandwagon on Sunday morning and is rapidly gaining followers.

Tweeting under the username PRESIDEN_RI, the two dozen tweets from his account so far are mostly links to government press releases.

The Jakarta Globe is still awaiting confirmation from a presidential spokesman about the validity of the account and whether the President himself would be writing tweets in the future.

SBY has been relatively slow to join Twitter compared to other world leaders. Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak joined Twitter in September 2008, and also maintains an active blog. US President Barack Obama joined in March 2007, long before he was president.

The most recent tweet from @PRESIDEN_RI refers to SBY’s landing in Brussels, en route to a meeting with European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso. Most of the president’s tweets so far were posted within a few minutes on Sunday morning.

However, the news of the president’s account is spreading fast through the Indonesian Twitter community. By 10:30 a.m. on Monday, SBY had 50 followers. That figure had reached 480 by 2 p.m.

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