Bill Gates gets tweeting and blogging

Wednesday 27 January 2010 | By Heidi Scott, Gosh! Media Copywriter

Tags: Bill Gates, Blogs, Facebook, Microsoft, Twitter

He may be the world's richest man but when it comes to social media, now he's just like the rest of us. Bill Gates, co-founder of US software giant Microsoft and dedicated philanthropist, opened a Twitter account on Saturday and then launched his own website – theGatesNotes.com – to keep the world informed of the work he and his wife, Melinda, are undertaking for their charitable foundation.

Billed as "An inside look at global matters", GatesNotes.com features articles under the subject headings "What I'm Thinking About", "What I'm Learning", "My Travels", "Curious Classroom" and "Conversations". The site launches with a personal message from Gates that reads:

"Since leaving my fulltime job at Microsoft to dedicate more time to our foundation, a lot of people have asked me what I'm working on. It often feels like I'm back in school, as I spend a lot of my time learning about issues I'm passionate about. I'm fortunate because the people I'm working with and learning from are true experts in their fields. I take a lot of notes, and often share them and my own thoughts on the subject with others through email, so I can learn from them and expand the conversation. I thought it would be interesting to share these conversations more widely with a website, in the hope of getting more people thinking and learning about the issues I think are interesting and important. So, welcome to the Gates Notes."

Gates, who is believed to have a personal fortune worth $56 billion, has also dipped his toe in Facebook but has reportedly said that maintaining his profile there has proved "way too much trouble", after being flooded with friend requests. As news spread of his Twitter début – which began with the somewhat unoriginal phrase "Hello world" – the billionaire gained more than 70,000 followers in his first six hours of tweeting. Now that figure is more than 360,000 and growing. If you want to join the ranks of Bill's fans, go to twitter.com/billgates.

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