Washington: US spy agency CIA has joined Twitter and Facebook, becoming an instant hit on the social media while sparking online debates over the move.
In a matter of less than nine hours, the Central Intelligence Agency had attracted 268,000 followers on Twitter on Friday.
And its first tweet, “We can neither confirm nor deny that this is our first tweet”, was retweeted as many as 170,000 times. Nearly a lakh people made it their favourite tweet.
After seven hours of CIA’s debut on the micro-blogging site, the spy agency tweeted again. This time it was to thank its followers. “Thank you for the @Twitter welcome! We look forward to sharing great #unclassified content with you,” it said. The news of CIA joining Twitter spread like a wild fire and was one of the most debated issues of the day.
“We do not comment on matters of intelligence, but now you can follow @CIA,” the US State Department wrote on Twitter, referring to its repeated answer on all questions related to intelligence matters.
