

The Real Bill Gates joins Twitter - prat
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/blog/2010/jan/20/bill-gates-twitters

======
mrduncan
Link: <http://twitter.com/billgates>

I assume (based on his first few tweets) that he'll be using it to promote his
foundation primarily. I selfishly wish that he would use it less for self
promotion and more for just odd ideas/thoughts, I think it would be really
interesting to get into his mind occasionally.

~~~
rythie
Actually that would make sense for him too, so he can get more followers and
mix the foundation stuff into a larger audience.

~~~
city41
227,000 followers in 24 hours isn't too shabby :) I don't think he'll have too
much problem getting followers.

~~~
rythie
Yes it's exceptionally good, though some of the key people tech people may
unfollow him if he only talks about his foundation.

------
SandB0x
I guess 140 characters ought to be enough for anybody.

~~~
rick_2047
but in this case they _are_ proving to be enough for anybody.

~~~
axod
Unless you're Steven Fry, Ricky Gervais, Miley Cirus, etc etc

I agree with the poster who recently likened Twitter to Mullets. We'll look
back thoroughly embarrassed.

~~~
DannoHung
Twitter ought to let you do long form posts, but have a separate, mandatory
field where you only have 140 character to entice people to read the rest.

~~~
RyanMcGreal
That would reinvent existing functionality, badly. You can already post a long
form essay to your blog and then post a teaser + link on Twitter.

------
vital101
I like how his first Tweet is a "Hello World". Still a programmer at heart I
guess.

~~~
artpop
Ironic, as that was probably the truest that cliché has ever been.

------
rdj
The rapid growth in his follower numbers is certainly impressive, but I'm more
curious about who _he_ chooses to follow. Looking through the list, it was
mostly foundations. What struck me as odd was that he followed Ashton Kutcher
and Ashley Tisdale. We all have our reasons for choosing who we want to
read/hear, I would love to know why he lent his mindshare to those two.

~~~
vaksel
Kutcher has 4.5 mil twitter followers, Tisdale has 2.5 mil, it was probably a
good way to end up in the stream of the top twitter celebrities to get that
initial bump

------
thehodge
I realise that he will get a lot of @replies but its a shame that he's just
replying to the celebrities on twitter..

~~~
Mark_B
Ah, but what's interesting though is that his @reply counts just as much as
yours or mine. To even notice Bill's reply, they'd have to sift through all
the @replies that they get every day.

~~~
spatulon
I'd imagine that some Twitter clients allow them to have a celebrity-only
view, so they can filter out the noise from the plebs.

------
edw519
@melinda playing bridge w/ warren this afternoon and then and then and then
[Report this problem? (Y/N)]

------
pierrefar
>190k followers in 19 hours. Very impressive.

~~~
umjames
>218k followers now.

I wonder how many are following him with the intention of trying to escalate
their Microsoft tech support problems or just general bashing of Microsoft.
I'll bet he learned how to block people early on.

~~~
mrduncan
I'm not sure if you're trying to bash Microsoft here or not, but I'm going to
assume you were genuinely curious.

The reason that most people are following him (anecdotally anyway) is that
he's a well known (the most well known?) and successful person in the tech
space who has just joined. There isn't any reason why he can't turn off seeing
"@ replies" from people he doesn't follow either - doing that will only show
tweets from people you follow. Twitter's settings are pretty configurable for
users who have tons of followers.

------
rbanffy
BTW, is Paul Allen on Twitter?

------
shaiguitar
So, bets how long until he gets hacked ? :)

------
lutorm
"I'm Bill Gates, yes I'm the real Gates all of you other Bill Gateses are just
imitating"... ;-)

------
nhebb
He's a little late to the party, but since he's tweeting for the Bill &
Melinda Gates Foundation, I'll cut him some slack.

