The espionage field has always been portrayed as having special access to great technology, so it was somewhat of a surprise to find the newest consumer of the great time vortex known as the Twitterverse: none other than the Central Intelligence Agency.

According to this piece, the CIA has several hundred analysts combing through tweets and other social media to both measure and predict reaction to news and other events, providing analysis that most days, makes it into the daily intelligence briefing for the President.

And, as this post points out, Twitter provides a very different sort of news platform – one that includes both the information that comprises the news, as well as distribution of that news itself, which both intertwine and reinforce each on each other.  At least I’d hope that’s the case, and it’s not just that the CIA is a resting ground for hundreds of hidden Justin Bieber fans.