Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates has finally joined Twitter, picking up over 25,000 followers in the space of four hours.
By the time he had been with the social network for 13 hours after joining yesterday (January 10th), he had picked up over 150,000 followers.
There have previously been a number of fake accounts on the microblogging website attributed to Gates.
He now has almost 160,000 people keeping up to date on his tweeted thoughts and activities, most of which will be related to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and his own interests, according to his bio.
Gates's first tweet began 'hello world' and explained that he is currently working on a foundation letter he is publishing next week.
He is following 40 other Twitter accounts, including Microsoft, the Carnegie Foundation, the Economist, TechCrunch and the Huffington Post.
Gates seems to have a long way to go before he can claim to be one of the top Twitter users. According to figures from Twitterholic, Ashton Kutcher is currently in the lead in terms of followers with almost 4.4 million.
Britney Spears, Ellen DeGeneres, Barack Obama and Oprah Winfrey are also among the most popular users of the website, with more than 14 million followers between them.
