Barack Obama spoke to a group of Chinese students tonight at a town hall in Shanghai. The meeting was streamed live, worldwide on the Whitehouse website and on the Whitehouse's Facebook page. He was asked a limited number of questions by the audience and one was about Twitter, which has been blocked in China since July.

Obama was asked by a student, "Do you know about the great firewall and should we be able to use Twitter?" His reply: "I have never used Twitter but I'm an advocate of technology and not restricting internet access." (via Breaking News Online)

This is an article that is bound to get a lot of coverage in the Twittersphere today given that Barak Obama's presidential campaign included Facebook, Twitter and many other social media platforms.

But perhaps he should have said 'I have never personally used Twitter'. No one expects him to personally Tweet, but he must know it was it is used by his communications team?