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The Curious Case of the "State Department" Twitter Account

September 16, 2008 at 12:00 PM | by | Comments (2)

If--and it's a big if--the US State Department is actually using Twitter to distribute "Country Specific Information," it's sure doing it with sass:

Lucky for you, the State Department has begun posting its country profiles and travel advisories on Twitter.

The LA Times reported on the newish feed on September 14, but the actual State Department website shows no sign of the username CSIState. (Or, for that matter, snarky comments like "Lucky for you.")

CSIState curiously isn't linked to the department's official Twitter account--under the username Dipnote--which itself is mentioned all over www.state.gov. Still, CSIState does link to real, up-to-date info from the State Department.

Our messages to both accounts asking for clarification have so far been ignored. Yay, technology!

Related Stories:
· CSIState [Twitter]
· Dipnote [Twitter]
· Twitter coverage [Jaunted]

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State Dept response

Hi, I linked back to this post on our blog (X).  An anonymous comment has just been posted, saying it's all legit.

http://www.thisisherd.com/2008/09/us-state-department-on-twitter-real-or.html

dirkthecow on September 17, 2008 at 12:03 PM #Permalink

@latimestravel re-tweeted by @CSIState

Those following the play-by-play will note that the State Dept. actually re-tweeted part of our blog post that originally confirmed the @CSIState Twitter account is indeed legit - http://plurl.me/zg.

(We took the extraordinary step of actually calling the State Department to verify the account's authenticity.)

Looks like they've since started adding quote marks to their re-tweets - http://tinyurl.com/59l536.

No update on if/when they plan to contract the US poet laureate to hand-craft their info-dense tweets, but as ever, we're closely following the beat of your tax dollars at work.

latimestravel on September 22, 2008 at 7:04 PM #Permalink

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