NEW YORK: Edward Snowden, who has confounded US officials since his abrupt departure from the country two years ago, has just found a new megaphone in Twitter.

The former National Security Agency worker who leaked classified documents about government surveillance started tweeting Tuesday. He had more than 185,000 followers an hour after his first tweet, “Can you hear me now?”

The message, a take-off on a cellphone provider television commercial, was retweeted 25,000 times within an hour. In his Twitter profile, Snowden described himself by saying: “I used to work for the government. Now I work for the public.”

He attracted more than had 740,000 by Tuesday evening.

Snowden is following just one account: tweets from the National Security Agency.

Based on a Thomson Reuters proprietary algorithm that looked at Twitter posts mentioning Snowden or his official Twitter handle, there were about 1,109 positive tweets versus 156 negative, a ratio of about 7 to 1, within the first hour of his initial tweet. The counts were from a representative sample.

Like other high-profile people on the messaging service, Snowden's account has a blue and white check mark, indicating that it was verified by Twitter.

A spokesman at Twitter Inc. confirmed that it gave Snowden the @Snowden username, which was being used by someone else. The NSA did not respond to a request for comment.

In his earlier hours on Twitter, Snowden exchanged tweets with prominent astrophysicist and radio talk-show host Neil deGrasse Tyson, who had encouraged Snowden to try Twitter during an interview on his show this month.

On Twitter, the two discussed the discovery of water on Mars, and Snowden joked that his work for the Freedom of the Press Foundation keeps him busy, “but I still find time for cat pictures.” Tyson asked how he felt about being considered a traitor as well as a hero, noting that “you're a geek to me.” Snowden responded that he was “just a citizen with a voice.”

Snowden is currently living in exile in Russia. He faces charges in the US that could land him in prison for up to 30 years.

Twitter has hosted other controversial figures and groups. Whistleblower website WikiLeaks has a verified Twitter account, as does Kim Dotcom, the founder of illegal download site Megaupload.