San Jose Mercury News reporters Dana Hull and Peter Delevett took a look recently at the social media strategy being executed by Tesla founder Elon Musk. Musk has managed to use his Twitter account to disclose such critical information about the company as the fact that it’s become cash flow positive as well as to tease future company announcements.

Musk is himself becoming his own brand, one that signifies risk taking, vision, and innovation. It’s reflected in Tesla’s customers who show fanboy like behavior, a type of defensiveness about the company that reminds me of early Apple supporters. Though unlike Steve Jobs who chose to disclose information during carefully planned news events, replete with live tweeting and applause, Musk has taken to using Twitter and frequent interviews with the press to constantly be releasing new information. In an age of continual information, Musk is feeding his fans.

Tesla’s share price has been on a tear for the last year, and that’s not all Musk. That’s because the company is due to officially become the first EV maker in history to be profitable when it releases its Q1 SEC filing. Musk also realizes that he may have to raise money at some point and if he has to do that, he’d much rather do that at a higher valuation. Also it hasn’t hurt that Musk has had mostly good news to tell investors and marginally bad news, like that the Model X SUV won’t be available till late 2014, has been slowly buried and dismissed.

I continue to remain optimistic on Tesla. Musk’s cult of personality and the concerns of the SEC about using social media to disclose material information aside, Musk remains one of the few people in cleantech with a true vision and a sense of the importance of design. And for that he deserves some credit.