Bill Gates signs up for Twitter

There are plenty of high profile Twitter users, such as Stephen Fry, Ashton Kutcher, Britney Spears and Barack Obama.

And another rich and famous personage has joined their ranks yesterday, with Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates entering the Twitterverse.

His first tweet was: “Hello World. Hard at work on my foundation letter – publishing on 1/25.”

And in reply he got a huge amount of people signing up to follow him. As of lunchtime today, he had over 170,000 followers and rising.

He is likely to use his Twitter account to promote the charitable concerns he has been focusing on since he stepped down from full-time work at Microsoft.