G8 Leaders Meet But Don't Tweet

With the first-ever e-g8 forum coming up, is it time for G8 leaders to bring diplomacy to Twitter?

The G8 leaders who meet together don't necessarily tweet together. With the exception of Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, seven of the G8 leaders meeting in the French seaside this week have Twitter accounts, but they don't even follow each other on the micro-blogging site. Matthias Lufkens, the associate director for media at the World Economic Forum in Davos, has been following Twitter diplomacy for years and suggests the leaders are out-of-sync when it comes to using social media for diplomacy, calling their Twitter-ing practices "haphazard and inconsistent." Lufkens says with the arrival of WikiLeaks, the secrecy of diplomatic relations is over and leaders should realize that Twitter sends a signal about how leaders view themselves as well as their relationships with others.