One obvious reason why many billionaires choose not to set up an account on Facebook or Twitter is because these sites don’t help them make money at all! They feel that it’s a waste of time to connect with people around the world on social networking sites, which doesn’t help them boost their wealth significantly.
Of course, a large majority of billionaires out there don’t concern themselves with trivial things like decorating their houses or what’s the latest trend on Wall Street. Instead they focus on the same principals that have made him money most of his adult life and blocks out everything else. However, despite the fact that social networking websites don’t benefit them at all, there are still a small number of rich people who still use them. You can check them out in the list which I’ve compiled below. Great thanks to Wikipedia and Forbes!
1. Bill Gates – $53 billion
Microsoft’s chairman and founder Bill Gates is the world’s richest man with a net worth of $40 billion. If he had not been committed to his Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation or any other charitable organization, his wealth could have been worth “hundreds of billions of dollars”. The well-known American business magnate and philanthropist recently joined Twitter and has since garnered close to half a million followers.
On Twitter, Gates shares his philanthropic musings, especially the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and there hasn’t been any updates related to technology so far. He published his first tweet “Hello World. Hard at work on my foundation letter – publishing on 1/25.” on January 20th this year.
2. Michael Bloomberg – $18.0 billion
Dubbed as the ‘richest resident in New York city’, Michael Bloomberg is the founder of Bloomberg and the current Mayor of New York City. With an estimated net worth of US$18.0 billion, the 67-year-old is ranked #23 in the world and most of his wealth comes from his 88% stake in Bloomberg L.P, a finance software services company. On Twitter, he tweets about his campaign and keeps his supporters updated to the latest political news about New York City.
3. Eric Schmidt – $6.3 billion
Eric Schmidt, the CEO of U.S. search engine juggernaut Google and technology advisor to President Barack Obama, boasts a net worth of $6.3 billion. Before clinching the CEO title of Google, Schmidt has held a series of high positions with several notable IT companies which include Sun Microsystems and Novell. At Google, Schmidt shares responsibility for Google’s daily operations with founders Page and Brin and also possesses the legal responsibilities typically assigned to the CEO of a public company and focuses on management of the vice presidents and the sales organization.
Schmidt joined the micro-blogging service on December last year with a rather awful username eschmidt0 and took up the ericschmidt verified account soon after the folks over at Twitter realized that the high-profile CEO is on Twitter. Unlike Bill Gates, Schmidt publishes Twitter encircling around the technology world, especially Google.
4. Pierre Omidyar – $5.2 billion
Born in France, Pierre Omidyar is a well-known Iranian-American entrepreneur and philanthropist. He is the founder of the eBay auction site and Omidyar Network which were launched in 1995 and 2004 respectively. Currently, Californian-based eBay has over 15,000 employees and its annual revenue hovers at around US$8 billion. For the past decade, Pierre Omidyar and his team have acquired several notable companies and start-ups such as Paypal and Skype.
To date, Omidyar Network has committed more than $270 million to for-profit companies and nonprofit organizations that foster economic advancement and encourage individual participation across multiple investment areas, including microfinance, property rights, government transparency, and social media. Prior to founding eBay and Omidyar Network, Pierre co-founded Ink Development Corp., later renamed eShop and acquired by Microsoft.
On Twitter, Pierre doesn’t share much about his personal life or answering the question – ‘What are you doing?’. Most of his tweets are replies to close friends, eBay fans, folks at eBay or even to complete strangers. Sometimes he tweets about politics, non-profits and traveling.
5. Richard Branson – $4.0 billion
Richard Branson is the 212th richest person in the world with a net worth of US$4.0 billion. Based in London, United Kingdom, he is the Chairman of Virgin Group. The core business areas are travel, entertainment and lifestyle, among others which includes world-class brands such as Virgin Atlantic Airways and Virgin Mobile.
He is not a frequent Twitter user and has posted only 234 updates since he joined the social networking website on 13 August 2007. Not surprisingly, he promotes new product launches, events and interviews related to Virgin Group. Once in a while, he will share his afternoon with his fans and the folks at Virgin on Twitter.
6. Oprah Winfrey – $2.4 billion
Having a net worth of US$2.4 billion, Oprah Winfrey is an American media personality, Academy Award nominated actress, producer, literary critic and magazine publisher. Despite the poverty she faced during her childhood, she has managed to emerge from a child who had experienced hardship to one of the world’s richest and most powerful woman. Touted as ‘the world’s most powerful woman’ by CNN and Time.com, she delivered over a million votes in the close 2008 Democratic primary race. Besides that, her presence and influence on Twitter have resulted in a significant boost in the number of new sign-ups during the CNN and Ashton Kutcher 1 million followers race.
With over 3.4 million followers on the micro-blogging platform, Oprah tweets about her personal life, share her thoughts and opinions regarding a particular issue with her loyal fans, and sometimes talk about her Oprah show.
7. Mark Cuban – $2.4 billion
Mark Cuban is an American billionaire entrepreneur with over US$2.4 billion worth of assets and stocks. He owns Dallas Mavericks (an NBA basketball team) and 2929 Entertainment (a media company with holdings in film and television production, film distribution, theatrical exhibition, home entertainment, television, and syndication). He is also the Chairman of HDNet, television channel in the United States, broadcasting exclusively in high-definition format and available via cable and satellite television.
Being an internet-savvy guy, Mark tweets about the search engine titan Google, its acquisition YouTube and social networking giant Facebook. Of course, he does writes about his basketball team Dallas Mavericks, NBA board meetings and many more.
8. Calvin Ayre – $2.0 billion (UPDATED)
Calvin Ayre is the founder of the Bodog online gaming and entertainment brand, which he developed and launched in 1994. As the face of the Bodog brand, Ayre’s notoriety skyrocketed in the mid-2000’s as online gaming’s popularity surged. Ayre’s public profile went mainstream when he was featured as the cover story for Forbes Magazine’s 2006 annual “Billionaires” edition, leading to being featured in People Magazine’s “Hottest Bachelor” list a few months later, and Star Magazine’s “Most Eligible Billionaire Bachelors” list in late 2007.