Russian President Dmitry Medvedev perched briefly at Twitter headquarters today as he began courting the micro-blogging sensation and other US Internet stars for a Moscow version of Silicon Valley.

Twitter employees packed into a sixth-floor cafeteria where co-founders Ev Williams and Biz Stone gave Medvedev a crash course in the service, which lets people share terse messages of 140 characters or less and Web links.

Medvedev fired off his first "tweet" with a message in Russian that was translated as "Hello everyone, I am now on Twitter."

In a possible sign of a budding Twitter lover, Medvedev immediately launched into a second tweet of "Today I am going to visit the Silicon Valley companies including Apple, Yandex, and Cisco."

Couches were set up living-room style on a raised platform at the back of the cafeteria in Twitter's new headquarters one block from where Apple unveiled the first iPhone and the latest model that hits store shelves tomorrow.

A book case contained a silver framed photograph of Stone and Williams flanking fashion model Tyra Banks. Bicycles were parked in a bike rack along another wall and a large, lighted "@" sign hung from a wall.