Edward Snowden's Twitter Debut: More Than 453,000 Engagements
Infamous whistleblower Edward Snowden signed up for Twitter on Tuesday, quickly finding an audience (and that all-important verification mark).
Infamous whistleblower Edward Snowden signed up for Twitter on Tuesday, quickly finding an audience (and that all-important verification mark).
Snowden, now the director of the Freedom of the Press Foundation, has been living in Russia since leaving the United States in 2013.
Data from Talkwalker shows that since Snowden’s first tweet:
- @Snowden has received 227.2K mentions
- @Snowden has received 453.5K engagements (likes, retweets, etc)
- Snowden has received 16.2K “Welcome to Twitter” mentions
Check out his first Tweet:
Can you hear me now?
— Edward Snowden (@Snowden) September 29, 2015
As of 9 a.m. PST on Wednesday, Snowden has 1.05 million followers on Twitter, but is only following one account: The official account for the National Security Agency/Central Security Service. 
So far, he’s used Twitter to have conversations with famed astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson:
.@neiltyson Thanks for the welcome. And now we’ve got water on Mars! Do you think they check passports at the border? Asking for a friend.
— Edward Snowden (@Snowden) September 29, 2015
Readers: Do you follow Snowden on Twitter?
Image courtesy of Edward Snowden on Twitter.
