Congress MP Shashi Tharoor on Saturday emphasised the need for governments to use social media to interact with the masses and to get a sense of accountability in democracy.

"I hope more and more governments use the social media. This will give them a sense of accountability in a democracy," he said at Goa Think Fest 2011 here.

The former Minister of State for External Affairs was speaking on the topic 'Romance, Revolution and Bigotry: The promise and perils of New Media'.

Tharoor said the social media was here to stay. "We may overestimate it, but we certainly cannot underestimate it (social media)," he said.

Pointing out to uprisings in countries like Egypt, Tharoor said it would have been difficult for these protests to sustain without social networking sites.

Tharoor claimed the sites had also come as a boon in times of calamities.

"Social networking has turned out to be a huge blessing in times of disaster which was recently witnessed after the tsunami in Japan, when there was an outpour of grief by thousands of netizens," he said.

The diplomat-turned-politician was one of the first political leaders in India to use Twitter to interact with millions of people who follow him online.