Tharoor takes others on board Twitter class

Says after him, Bahrain foreign minister has begun tweeting

Tharoor takes others on board Twitter class

Says after him, Bahrain foreign minister has begun tweeting

"The foreign minister of Bahrain, Shaikh Khalid Bin Ahmed Bin Mohammed Al Khalifa, started tweeting after me," he says.

He says it was only when mainstream media began to take notice of his tweets that he realised the importance of the medium.

But it was his 'cattle class' tweet that got more people hitched on to the Twitter bandwagon than anything else, a lesson on the relationship between controversy and publicity that must not have been lost on the new politician.

"Even the Prime Minister asked me to explain what Twitter's all about," he says.

Saying hi to tech

It was when the Congress was going on its austerity drive recently that Tharoor had jokingly described the compromise on personal space in lower class ticket travel as flying cattle class. It had kicked up a political storm, as many saw it as an insult to those who do not go for the costliest air tickets.

Tharoor calls Twitter a "virtual medium of communication." He uses it to demystify the governance process without violating the Official Secrets Act.

He is trying to do something that many do not welcome, but he says, "There is also an element of accountability involved when I tweet regular updates about my work."

His colleagues, who had been curious to know all about Twitter, backed out after "the blast of negative publicity that my cattle class tweet generated."

Writer's block

These days, Tharoor misses writing. The prolific writer of the past has not been able to devote time to writing, what with being a minister and member of Parliament.

"I spend a lot of my time travelling, so it's just tweeting in cars between meetings or when I am back wherever I am put up," he says.
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Shashi Tharoor, who does not consider himself a Twitter addict, was in Bangalore, which has an active Twitter community, on Friday for a tweetup, or a social meeting of Twitter users.

His initiation
Shashi Tharoor was introduced this year to Twitter by his friend Jacob Joseph, who is known as 23Jacob on Twitter. It was on March 16 that he opened his account and Jacob taught him how to tweet. On May 16 while counting for the Lok Sabha election was on, an excited Tharoor used his Blackberry to send his first tweet.

4,05,392
The number of followers Tharoor has on Twitter if it's not already grown by the time you read this

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