Darlington gets official Resident Tweeter

The northern English town of Darlington has become the first town in the world to get an official "Twitterer in residence". The appointee is Mike McTimoney - a teacher better known as @thedarlobard.

He's going to be responsible for making sure that the town is kept abreast of news and events, both Darlington-centric and across the UK. It's linked to the Darlington Experiment 2.0 - a website that aggregates any mentions of Darlington from sites like Flickr, YouTube, Twitter and Facebook.

He'll get a salary of £140 per year, matching the site's 140-character limit. McTimony said: "I think it is great to be the UK’s first twitterer in residence and I hope other towns will follow suit", with Andy Atkins, a member of the Darlington Partnership adding: "More and more people are communicating using digital and social media and we want to reach as many people as possible".