Bill Gates has a lot to learn
January 20th, 2010
Bill Gates is on Twitter (http://www.twitter.com/billgates) . Yay! (really?) I find it quite amusing that in the first 3 hours he demonstrated the real power of Twitter - Open Connections in a Real Time World. Take a look at his second post:
RT @RyanSeacrest: Just got a call from cnn. here are the final numbers raised from last nights show.. for unicef + american red cross $8 …
Ignore the fact that he is taking the time to Retweet something that Ryan Seacrest tweeted earlier - look at the Tweet. It states that the he and CNN raised a whopping $8 - Eight Dollars.
Clearly the show did not raise $8. This is a PR nightmare. If there were Twitter Analytic’s like we have for Web pages I bet that these first 5 Tweets are the most read tweets in the history of Twitter. (well maybe not). So, instead of promoting the fact that Ryan and folks at CNN actually raised $8,944,956 he tweeted that they raised $8 and everyone now knows Bill Gates is an idiot human.
Had Bill Gates understood that the words: “RT @RyanSeacrest: ” were going to be pre-pended to his post he may have done something like this:
RT @RyanSeacrest: here are the final numbers raised from last nights show for unicef + american red cross $8,944,956
That would have given him 24 more characters to work with where he might have done this:
RT @RyanSeacrest: here are the final numbers raised from last nights show for unicef + american red cross $8,944,956 [double it - call me]
No Assistant, No Editor, No Press Secretary, Nothing - Open Communications! Love it.
(Thanks Bill)