Could Bill Gates soar to the top position on twitter ? With news that he’s officially on twitter spreading like wildfire, his follower count continues to grow at an astonishing rate. In a matter of hours, he’s gone from 0 followers, to over 100,000 in one day.

Head over to http://twitter.com/billgates and hit the refresh button on your browser to watch how fast they’re piling on. Expect this rate to be sustained for the next few weeks as more tweets and blogs help spread the world. I predict he will become one of the top people on twitter, if not THE top.

So what’s the world’s richest man got to say ? Well his first tweet is a tip of the hat to his geek past – “Hello World.” There’s also news about his work at the Bill and Melinda foundation and the disaster in Haiti.

He’s only following 40 people right now, including powerful people like Barack Obama, but also some more interesting accounts from the tech community – Ina Fried from cNet and also TechCrunch. Apparently Bill’s also a fan of Ashley Tisdale

Something else to watch with interest, is Gates’ first hand exposure to the power of twitter, a service his beloved Microsoft does not own. Could we see a buyout or investment of twitter by Microsoft in the not to distant future ?

Ultimately, it’s an import celebrity for twitter to get on board and an important platform Gates to use to hopefully benefit humanity.

Update
Today the count is over 250,000 followers on twitter. Add to that his Facebook page – http://www.facebook.com/BillGates has 58,817 fans. He’s also now posting blog entries at http://www.gatesnotes.com/