Britain's spy agency GCHQ, referred to as the country's surveillance post, has officially joined Twitter as part of its efforts to be more accessible and help the public understand more about its secretive work.
"Hello, world," was the first message yesterday with which the usually secretive spies at the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) base in Cheltenham, south-west England, entered the world of social media.
Theirnew accountattracted more than 2,000 followerswithin half an hour of its verified feed.
Andrew Pike, the director of communications at GCHQ, said: "In joining social media, GCHQ can use its own voice to talk directly about the important work we do in keeping Britain safe."
GCHQ said the move makes it the first UK intelligence agency to provide news, updates, and opinions on Twitter.
"Our first Tweet: 'Hello, world' is one of the first programmes youlearn to write incoding languagessuch as C, Python, Java, PHP, and Ruby.
"For those just starting to programme, getting 'Hello, world' to appear on a screen is a gentle introduction to coding, and as a technical organisation with computing at its core, it resonated with many of our staff who have learnt to program during their career," the agency explained.
GCHQ said the move is aimed at being more accessible and to help the public understand more about its work.
"We also want to reach out to the technical community and add our voice to social media conversations about technology, maths, cyber security and other topics where we have a view.
"We will be using Twitter to talk about our history, mission outcomes, languages, maths, cyber security, technology and innovation, job opportunities and as a way of signposting events, publications, news, blogs, and opinion pieces," it said.
One of the first accounts @GCHQ followed was @007 - the official account for fictional spy James Bond.
