After his rather large investment in Facebook, Bill Gates has abandoned his account.
Reported in the Wall St. Journal today, Gates didn’t delete his account (word is, that is actually impossible), but he is stopped using it.
According to the article:
His problem is excessive celebrity. After Microsoft invested $240 million in Facebook last year, Gates spent 30 minutes a day on the social-networking site, the Sun reports. “But he signed off after getting more than 8,000 friend requests a day, and spotted weird fan sites about him,” says the Sun, citing an unnamed colleague. The article linked above says he deleted the account. A Microsoft spokesperson tells us that Gates hasn’t deleted it, but that he has stopped using it because he was inundated with friend requests.
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Mike–Do you really expect Bill Gates–or anyone else–to spend hours and hours a day responding to strangers’ requests to make them “friends”? And then to read their comments? Get real! He–and all of us–have work to do.
Comment by Bob Boyce - February 13, 2008 10:31 am
An interesting point. Although it’s unrealistic to expect someone like Mr. Gates to spend “hours and hours” on facebook, using social media has the potential to provide some unfiltered access to information on the ground for those who don’t ordinarily have a direct pipeline to/from consumers.
Comment by Danny Williamson - February 13, 2008 12:43 pm
I think we might have stumbled onto the litmus test for Facebook’s sustainability and business potential. If the site can be developed to a point that EVEN Bill Gates can effectively use it, they’ll be onto something seriously good…
Comment by Denis - February 13, 2008 12:50 pm
[...] on Facebook. It’s sort of like tripping the prom queen. So don’t revisit posts like this, this, this, this, and [...]
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