It appears the Dalai Lama is following in the footsteps of Pope Benedict XVI and moving into the world of social networking. Today he joined microblogging service Twitter.
Going under the obscure Twitter name @OHHDL, The Office of His Holiness the Dalai Lama sent out a welcome tweet earlier today introducing the official Twitter page of the Dalai Lama.
Update:Twitter announced on Monday morning that the OHHDL account was actually a fake. The company has been contacted by the real Dalai Lama’s office and the account has been closed. Twitter says that they are working to get the real deal set up with an account – there’s certainly demonstrated interest. At more than 16,000 followers in one weekend, the fake Dalai Lama was one of the fastest growing accounts that Twitter has ever seen.
OHHDL is responsible for all media pertaining to the Dalai Lama and will administer the Twitter account. In just over 9 hours, the OHHDL has managed to attract in excess of 2000 followers and is following most of them back.
The account has only been updated 20 times as of writing this post, with welcome and thank you messages, links to the Dalai Lama’s FaceBook and MySpace account, and so far seems to be interacting with the general Twitter community.
The latest message? “I’m sure HH will be just as inquisitive about technology as he has been over the past 14 reincarnations.”
So if you want to follow the Dalai Lama, head on over to OHHDL and say hi.
Thanks to Teresa Boze for bringing this story to our attention. If you’d like to befriend the ReadWriteWeb staff on Twitter here are our accounts – we’d love to meet you too!
