President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, who only recently signed up to Twitter, has rapidly risen up the ranks to become the top tweeter in the country despite having previously described the service as a "tool of terror." The leader has also hired hundreds of staffers to reply to tweets.

Chavez ("Presidente de la República Bolivariana de Venezuela. Soldado Bolivariano, Socialista y Antiimperialista" according to his bio) has, at the time of writing, 239,994 followers and is included on 7,538 lists. Presumably some of those lists also include people who are "threats to the open web."

With "Verified Account" status on the service, Chavez follows just five others, but it's unlikely the majority in Venezuela follow him — it was recently estimated that only 31% of the country's population have Internet access, although this figure has grown under Chavez's rule.

However, it seems public engagement with the president's new online presence has been high — more than 50,000 messages have been directed to him in the two weeks he's been tweeting. So how does Chavez find time to tweet to the people? A newly appointed team of 200 Twitter aides will help to lighten that load, reports the AP. Chavez said of the new hires, "I'm creating a team due to the avalanche of requests, and some grievances."

Chavez has also changed his tune on Twitter since he joined and rose to become the number one user in Venezuela. He now calls the service "a weapon that also needs to be used by the revolution."