My, my, what a surprise for the new year. Rupert Murdoch has joined Twitter at @rupertmurdoch. The account has been verified by Twitter and had picked up almost 54,000 followers already by Monday afternoon.
Murdoch is only following four people so far: Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, Zynga founder Mark Pincus, an apparent spoof account of Google co-founder Larry Page @Plaid_Page, and Lord Alan Sugar.
Lord Sugar greeted Murdoch’s arrival by tweeting: “I wonder is my old pal @rupertmurdoch is eying up Twitter to buy or invest in it. He missed out on Facebook and My Space.. not a great deal”.
Murdoch has already demonstrated the kind of injudiciousness we can but hope to report again soon, gleeful gossip-mongers that we are. “Maybe Brits have too many holidays for broke country!” he tweeted, before quickly deleting the dig.
Unfortunately for Murdoch, it’s not quite as easy to delete tweets as it is to erase other people’s voicemail messages. Various blogs and publications spotted and reported the deleted tweet before it slipped into the ether, including News Corp-owned The Australian.
Murdoch isn’t messing about with sharing his views. So far, he’s branded Steve Jobs’ biography “interesting but unfair”, he’s praised Michael Bloomberg as “being New York’s best mayor in memory”, and tweeted of Caribbean island St Barth’s: “too many people. Thoughts best kept private around here. Like London!”
He also got into an almost-snide tete-a-tete with Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey. @Jack welcomed Murdoch to Twitter thus: “With his own voice in his own way, @RupertMurdoch is now on Twitter.” He then said his resolution for recent years had been to simplify.
Murdoch replied: “Right on simplify but easier in startups. My resolutions, try to maintain humility and always curiosity. And of course diet!”
Dorsey retorted: “@RupertMurdoch you can definitely simplify big companies too. They need it the most. Try it this year.”
Murdoch shot back with a tweet laced with one-upmanship: “@jack you are right and we try all the time. But wait till you have 53000 people across sixty countries with different laws,etc,”.
In another intriguing twist to this Twitter tale, Murdoch’s wife Wendi Deng Murdoch has also apparently joined Twitter, though her account has not yet been officially verified.
@Wendi_Deng is plopping out sweet little tweets such as “@rupertmurdoch u are always humble, my sweet! Xx”, “@rupertmurdoch love u! but u work too hard sweets!” and “keep them NICE. know @rupertmurdoch not always popular but dont be disrepectful ;)”
😉 indeed Wendi, 😉 indeed. As you might expect, there are a fair few nasty and hilariously horrid tweets heading Mr Mudoch’s way, but to avoid having to make a call to our libel lawyer, we will leave you to discover them for yourselves.
Deng – if it is the real Deng – is busy quashing any rumours that Murdoch might be eyeing up Twitter for purchase. Earlier she tweeted: “@Lars9596 no, @rupertmurdoch just interested in trying twitter not in buying it! silly boy!!”
She might also prove to be the wifely moderator of Murdoch’s slip-ups. After he tweeted his dig at Brits, she tweeted, “@rupertmurdoch RUPERT!!! delete tweet!”, followed by: “EVERY1 @rupertmurdoch was only having a joke pROMSIE!!!”
Hopefully he’ll still manage to keep us entertained with more foot-in-mouth moments. He tweeted yesterday: “I’m getting killed for fooling around here and friends frightened what I may really say!”
Watch this space…
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