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Hillary Clinton, representing the State Department, explains why Twitter is valuable to them in a message to Twitter for their 5th birthday. Follow @StateDept for an inside perspective of what's going on around US government affairs.

Hello, I'm Hillary Clinton and happy 5th birthday Twitter.

I want to say a few words but more than 140 characters

about the importance of social media tools like Twitter which are a critical part of what I at the State Department call 21st century statecraft.

Thanks to this connection technologies people can exchange ideas and information instantanously anywhere on the planet from a laptop in London to a cellphone in Cairo.

Countries and cultures are brought together like never before

and here at the State Department we use Twitter to share news about American Foreign Policy with the world.

Our Embassies overseas tweet in 11 languages and nearly 60 feeds and we're doing everything we can to protect

the freedom to connect whether through Twitter or any other technology.

So I invite each of you to follow our main feed @StateDept and be sure to tweet at us.

Congratulations again on five years of innovation and achievement. I cannot wait to see what the next five years will bring.

Thank you.