海角大神

DEAD SEA, JORDAN 鈥� After successfully launching last year with the mission of combating stereotypes about Arabs and Muslims, Jordan鈥檚 fashionable and photogenic Queen Rania has taken social media to the next step by opening . She created it last week, on the occasion of Pope Benedict XVI鈥檚 visit to Jordan, and already has more than 50,000 followers 鈥� not a bad crowd, even by Internet standards. (Al Gore has more than 800,000.)

Her "tweets" so far blend inspirational messages with personal-ish updates on life in the royal palace 鈥� full of little details about the king鈥檚 taste in films (action, obviously) and the challenges of getting the royal children to dress up to meet the pope. Saturday, at the World Economic Forum (WEF) 鈥� in which Middle Eastern countries defended the same free market orthodoxy that many in the West are now questioning 鈥� the queen gave her . She answered questions submitted to the WEF blog via twitter and voted for on online; five were selected for the queen to answer.

The channel has drawn a big positive response from many Jordanians, and loyal fans of the queen鈥檚 YouTube channel.

鈥渨e r being hypnotized by Queen Rania...she z so cool.. we luv her,鈥� tweets @RulaMughrabi. But it , of course.

A final irony: Jordanian mobile phone companies still don鈥檛 support Twitter, so while you can read the messages online, it鈥檚 impossible to send or receive updates from your phone. A Jordanian company has started a similar service, called WatWet (Arabic for 鈥渨hispers,鈥�) which works in Arabic and English, and is supported by regional mobile phone giant Zain.

The Queen wasn't the only one to be liveblogging the WEF this past weekend: 20 young Arab activists from the were liveblogging the proceeding using WatWet and the Jordanian citizen journalism website , and they鈥檝e offered some distinctly :

鈥渋 just figured while politicians cnt solve anythng, its mainly because they meet in halls like these! Maybe the shiny marble decieve them into thnkng evrythn is as shiny.鈥�