Twitter is populated with all kinds of users. There are celebrities with millions of followers and regular folks with a few dozen. And then there is Paul Krugman, who amassed a huge following without knowing it.
Tucked at the bottom of a post published Friday in which he details his history with blogging, the New York Times columnist and Nobel Prize-winning economist revealed when he learned that his employer had created a Twitter account for him.
“A proper blog came much later, when I realized that I wanted a place to put the backstory behind my Times columns; the Times added a Twitter feed (which I didn’t even know existed until [Times editorial page editor] Andy Rosenthal casually mentioned that I had 600,000 followers),” Krugman wrote. “And so here we are today.”
Krugman, whose account was created in the fall of 2008, now has more than 1 million followers.
He’s not a prolific tweeter. Like other Times columnists such as Maureen Dowd and David Brooks, Krugman’s feed – which is automated – is largely filled with tweets containing nothing more than a headline and link to his latest piece.
In a 2013 blog post, Krugman explained why he doesn’t tweet.
“One reason is that I have better things to do with my time. Another is that I don’t think my instant reactions to things are especially interesting,” Krugman wrote. “But I have to admit that I’ve also been aware for some time how many people end up destroying themselves by tweeting something really offensive.”