He may wear simple robes and live in the hills of northern India, but never let it be said that the Dalai Lama doesn't have his finger on the pulse when it comes to technology.
After appearing in an Apple advert ‑ he's surely too cool to ever advertise a PC ‑ the Tibetan spiritual leader has now joined Twitter.
He joined the microblogging site on 22 February and has already got about 140,000 followers. His tweets have been uncontroversial so far, providing links to news stories, videos and other articles about his Holiness.
On his second day on Twitter, the 75-year-old tweeted: "Dalai Lama says loves China despite 'suppression'." He joins the Vatican and a number of twitterers purporting to be Jesus Christ on the social networking site.
The Dalai Lama was apparently inspired to go on Twitter after meeting the site's founder, Evan Williams, in LA, although Williams said the Dalai Lama laughed when he suggested the idea to him.
As he is the 14th reincarnation of the Dalai Lama and the temporal and spiritual leader of the Tibetan people, it is probably only right that he is not following anyone else (on Twitter). Perhaps he will stretch out a hand to Chinese president Hu Jintao, who is also on Twitter ‑ but only in the same way Jesus is.
