NPR's social media specialist lives the tweet life

As National Public Radio's senior strategist specializing in social media, Andy Carvin, 39, is known to more than 43,000 Twitter followers as @acarvin.

From his office in Washington and his nearby home, he spends up to 17 hours sending nearly 300 Twitter tweets a day about minute-by-minute events, mostly in North Africa and the Middle East.Called a curator of information, he re-tweets first-person experiences, often shocking and heart-wrenching, of the so-called Jasmine Revolution. In the process, he puts a human face on the Arab and Muslim freedom fighters. "If part of my tweeting helps expose the American public to a broader understanding to what Arabs and Muslims are like, so much the better," Carvin said. His effect is so far-reaching that Time magazine recently included him in its poll of 100 Most Influential People. "Everybody who follows the Middle East owes a debt to Andy," said New York Times columnist and two-time Pulitzer Prize-winner Nicholas Kristof. "He's the maestro of the region's Twitter feed."