\u201cI showed your tweet to V. Yu. Surkov. Call to his office and tell him who is taking the money\u201d. This is how Russian president Dmitri Medvedev reacted to one of the tweets he got; he took measures and tweeted it. Moreover, as it becomes clear from his page, he did it from an iPad.<\/p>\n
Last June, when Medvedev visited Twitter HQ in the USA, they created the KremlinRussia profile on Twitter<\/a> (in Russian and English). But today, this one is left for official information only. For personal interaction, greetings and thoughts, Medvedev now uses Medvedev Russia<\/a> profile.<\/p>\n Over 215,000 people follow Medvedev\u2019s Russian Twitter account, and over 89,000 read his English tweets<\/a>. Impressive, but it’s more interesting to learn who Medvedev himself follows on Twitter: Obama, Schwarzenegger, British PM, etc. Well, before going to bed why not check how colleagues spent their day?<\/p>\n It\u2019s not news that world leaders are paying attention to the Internet and social media in particular. Obama, who\u2019s known as a social media president, tries to keep in touch with the voters through different online platforms (My.BarackObama.com<\/a>, his YouTube channel<\/a>, his Twitter account<\/a>). He has over 7 million followers on Twitter, including several presidents and leaders. <\/p>\n \u201cEgypt, where I spent my university years. May you be blessed with security & prosperity for all in this new era,\u201d writes Queen of Jordan, Rania. Her Twitter account<\/a> has just under 1.5 million readers and she has about 600,000 friends and fans on Facebook: here they can also comment on the Queen\u2019s family and official photos.<\/p>\n People are tired of official reports; for them leaders or candidates that bother to write a few words a day on Twitter and Facebook seem much more trustful, friendly and close; they become people\u2019s virtual \u201cfriends\u201d which is really handy especially before elections. This pre-election tool usually gets more passive after elections, but often it turns into a democratic tool for transparent governance.<\/p>\n In all cases, the Internet is only a tool and media, the purpose and function of which depends on who’s using it. Evgeny Morozov in his book Net Delusion argues that the Internet can be a liberation tool, as much as a means for dictatorship and propaganda. Morozov claims that countries like Iran, China and Russia are already masterfully implementing internet for keeping their regimes.<\/p>\n