Hugo Chavez Joins Twitter

After counting social networking sites among the vast conspirators conspiring against him, Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez has had an epiphany to join them to beat them... or something like that. Yep, Chavez had considered Twitter to be a terrorist threat, but then apparently thought it was necessary to jump in the trenches to fight the battle. From Bloomberg:

"Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, who already writes a weekly newspaper column, created a radio program and speaks for as many as seven hours every Sunday, plans to add a Twitter Inc. account to his media arsenal.

'Comandante Chavez is going to open his Twitter account soon to wage the battle online,' Diosdado Cabello, head of the country's telecommunications regulator, said today on state television. 'I'm sure he'll break records for numbers of followers.'

...The announcement comes after Venezuela's opposition said Chavez, 55, was trying to block social networking sites like Facebook Inc. and Twitter last month."

Here is Chavez's Twitter page. While gushing over his followers in his second post, Chavez is only following five others, including Fidel Castro, the telecommunications regulator Cabello and the United Socialist Party of Venezuela.

Just a memo to the man who drones for eight hours in his speeches, though: there's a 140-character limit on Twitter.

(Photo by Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images)