Bill Gates Joins Twitter

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Jan 20, 5:54AM EST

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It took Microsoft (NADSAQ:MSFT) founder Bill Gate long enough to join Twitter. Now he can join President Obama and Demi Moore as fans of the social media network based on sending people short phrases.

According to CNET, “The first post by the real Bill Gates was a note that he plans to release the second of his annual foundation letters on Monday.” That may be a sign the Gates will use Twitter for philanthropic purposes rather than as a way to promote Microsoft.

Gates is likely to rise up the Twitter ranking quickly because of his fame and tech cult status. He should certainly gets as many followers as financial planner Suze Oman, who has over one million. Gates might even pass Ashton Kutcher, Moore’s husband, and Oprah, who each have more than two million followers.

As Gates joins Twitter, particularly if it is to publicize the work of his foundation around the world, it will give push the network’s reputation up again. What was once a toy for teenagers has become a way to talk about Gates’ plans to save the world using his huge fortune.

Douglas A. McIntyre

About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.