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Bill Gates adding hundreds of followers a minute on Twitter
Yes, it's really him. Bill Gates joined Twitter today, offering his first "Hello World" a few hours ago and quickly moving on to some celebrity hobnobbing, giving a public shout-out to Ryan Seacrest.
Whether or not it's a watershed moment for the popular microblogging service remains to be seen. But apparently lots of folks are eager to read whatever Gates will have to say. He has been adding hundreds of followers a minute since the news started to spread. When we clocked it at one point this afternoon, he was approaching 1,000 followers a minute, although that's certainly not a sustainable rate.
Of course, there are tons of people pretending to be Bill Gates on social networking services -- and in your email inbox -- but his Twitter account comes with a tag officially verifying it as authentic, and Twitter's Biz Stone offered some extra confirmation: "Cool, @billgates is officially on Twitter!"
More interesting is the list of people and organizations that Gates himself is following on Twitter, which includes reporters, philanthropic groups, news organizations -- and, of course, Disney starlet Ashley Tisdale. (Apparently "High School Musical" is big in the Gates family.)
For the record, Gates is also now on Facebook, but there you can only be his fan, not his friend.
Update, 5 p.m.: Breaking News: Ashley Tisdale has officially responded: "@BillGates Welcome to twitter!!! Its amazing what you and your foundation do! Xoxo"
About Todd Bishop
Todd Bishop is co-founder and managing editor of TechFlash. He has covered Microsoft and the technology industry for more than five years, most recently as a daily newspaper reporter and blogger based in Seattle.
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