Dive summary:

• Pope said in his first tweet, “Dear friends, I am pleased to get in touch with you through Twitter. Thank you for your generous response. I bless all of you from my heart.”
• Initial tweet by the Pope was sent via iPad.
• Pope Benedict XVI has over 785,000 followers but only follows seven of his own Twitter feeds in other languages.

From the article:

… The Pope’s first tweet is a watershed moment for social media — as the old top-down ways of communicating, that are still all too often favoured by establishment institutions such as the Catholic Church, are shown again and again to be unworkable in a hyper connected age. Ignoring the place where people are choosing to communicate — and also to criticise — is no longer a viable option. Shunning social media means appearing not just out of touch — but irrelevant to a modern, digitally connected audience. …