Join Hugo Chavez' Twitter Army!

Hugo Chavez, seen here with his second-favorite source of tweets

​Even technophobes have been forced to admit the usefulness of the San Francisco-based website Twitter.

Along with its larger benefits, you can tweet to the world at large a poster for a lost dog -- who is gay.

But is there any money in it? For the site, perhaps. For you, also perhaps -- if you're willing to work as a sock puppet for boorish Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez. Rather than nationalizing Twitter -- he would if he could -- he's become his nation's top-followed tweeter. But he's not doing it alone: Chavez has announced the hiring of 200 aides to manage his Twitter feed. Humorously, that's more folks than actually work at Twitter.

Chavez' twitter account now has almost 267,000 followers. That's nowhere near Michael Ian Black's 1.55 million -- but, hey, those 200 aides love a challenge.

Finally, Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Jose Molina complained that Chavez could be spending his time more judiciously by governing the nation than tweeting. For San Franciscans, this is a familiar complaint. 

However, the hiring of 200 Twitter minions -- presumably at public expense -- is something no one has thought to do in San Francisco. At least not yet.