The New York Times Sunday Magazine this week has a feature on two young State Department staffers: Jared Cohen, the youngest of the State Department's policy planners, and Alec Ross, senior adviser for innovation to the Secretary of State.

The article claims they “are among the most followed of anyone working for the U.S. government, coming in third and fourth after Barack Obama and John McCain."

“This didn't happen by chance. Their Twitter posts have become an integral part of a new State Department effort to bring diplomacy into the digital age, by using widely available technologies to reach out to citizens, companies and other nonstate actors. Ross and Cohen's style of engagement -- perhaps best described as a cross between social-networking culture and foreign-policy arcana -- reflects the hybrid nature of this approach. Two of Cohen's recent posts were, in order: 'Guinea holds first free election since 1958' and 'Yes, the season premier [sic] of Entourage is tonight, soooo excited!' This offhand mix of pop and politics has on occasion raised eyebrows and a few hackles (writing about a frappucino during a rare diplomatic mission to Syria; a trip with Ashton Kutcher to Russia in February), yet, together, Ross and Cohen have formed an unlikely and unprecedented team in the State Department. They are the public face of a cause with an important-sounding name: 21st-century statecraft.”

It later adds: “Early this year, Ross and Cohen helped prop open the State Department's doors by bringing 10 leading figures of the tech and social-media worlds to Washington for a private dinner with Clinton and her senior staff. Among the guests were Eric Schmidt, the chief executive of Google; Jack Dorsey, co-founder and chairman of Twitter; James Eberhard of Mobile Accord; Shervin Pishevar of the mobile-phone-game-development company SGN; Jason Liebman of Howcast; Tiffany Shlain, founder of the Webby Awards; and Andrew Rasiej of Personal Democracy Forum, an annual conference on the intersection of politics and technology.”

Follow them at twitter.com/JaredCohen and twitter.com/AlecJRoss