Within hours of becoming active on Twitter, Edward Snowden had tens of thousands of followers. Less than 24 hours later, he has exceeded one million. I’m betting it won’t be long before he doubles this number.
Snowden may be demonstrating that he is a master at leveraging new media to place messages and drive headlines. At the very least, he’s reinforcing how social media has forever changed the communications world.
Activating his Twitter account resulted in a massive amount of news coverage and social media mentions. Snowden’s decision to initially follow only one organization – which I see as a smart positioning move – was covered extensively in breaking news stories.
His first tweets generated nearly two hundred thousand retweets in a matter of hours and helped kick off another cycle of significant traditional and social media coverage.
Snowden is proving how social media can drive traditional coverage and how important Twitter is when it comes to creating awareness, building community and placing messages.
I know from my experience working in the identity, security and privacy sectors that there are a lot of folks interested in seeing what Snowden may tweet next. This is when we’ll likely see the social to traditional media coverage cycle begin again. – Russ DeVeau