founder Bill Gates started tweeting on Tuesday. Gates bid the Twitter community a “Hello World” around midday, and then followed that message with three more lauding efforts to raise aid funds for earthquake-devastated Haiti. The recently-retired Microsoft legend's Twitter page bore a blue check-mark icon used to verify identities of famous people using the wildly popular microblogging service. As sundown neared in the Pacific state of Washington where Gates lives, he had logged four tweets and signed on to “follow” messages at 40 other Twitter accounts including those of Microsoft and its new Bing search engine. Twitter users that Gates was tracking ranged from Queen Rania Al-Abdullah of Jordan and US President Barack Obama to actress Ashley Tisdale, actor Ashton Kutcher, and CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research. Gates was also following tweets from prestigious TED conferences known for mind-bending themes and humanitarian missions. Slightly more than 61,000 people signed on to follow Gates on his opening day tweeting. The number of people following Gates rose steadily as word of his arrival among the “twitterati” ricocheted with increasing speed in “retweets” through the day.
