Yesterday, the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, head of Her Majesty's Government, became the first head of government (at least, as far as I can tell) to officially embrace Twitter.

Is this a momentous occasion? It's hard to say. Politicians have been increasingly embracing various forms of social media. Nowhere, for example, do more elected officials actively write blogs than in Europe.

Some have suggested in recent days that Twitter is going mainstream. Perhaps that's the case as well.

But either way, it's heartening to see elected officials embracing social media more and more. Here's hoping that they are using it as a tool for genuine interaction with constituents, not just another channel to drive a message. On this, I confess that I am not hopeful.

The answer will be revealed through a simple test: Will 10 Downing Street follow the Twitter users who follow their feed?

I'll keep an eye on it and report back.

Big Hat Tip to UK social media consultant Stuart Bruce, who drew my attention to this story with his Twitter. UPDATE: Stuart now has a blog post up.

UPDATE: In the spirit of giving proper credit, I want to single out Simon Dickson, who was the first person to Tweet about the story. He as a blog post up about it, too.

UPDATE II: Good news. I just received a notification that Downing Street is now following me on Twitter. It looks like they are working through their list. Also, they are up to 156 followers since this post yesterday.

UPDATE III: Downing Street is now following 140 while attracting 210 followers of its own. And most interestingly, just made their first announcement via Twitter: They've also created a Downing Street Flickr feed. The first photos are from President Sarkozy's visit yesterday.