Steve Ballmer Reveals His Secret Twitter Account 166
alphadogg writes "'Quietly' is not a word that would usually describe any action performed by Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer. But quietly is exactly how Ballmer has conducted himself on Twitter, a site he joined over a year ago unbeknownst to most of the technology world. Just a few days ago, Ballmer was speaking in Kiev, Ukraine, and according to a transcript on the Microsoft website, Ballmer responded to an audience member who asked 'when are you going to start tweeting?' Ballmer said: 'I have a Twitter account. I'm just very private about who I really am on Twitter.'"
Re:Even more pointless (Score:3, Interesting)
Isn't the entire point of twitter communicating with a large audience? If no one knows who you are, then what's the point?
I don't care about the dude behind @ShitMyDadSays (the Twitter account, not the absolutely horrendous TV show) but I love what he puts out there (I follow him by RSS though). Hell, a lot of the people I follow on Twitter I don't know anything about but I find what they have to say interesting.
YMMV.
Re:Inquiring minds want to know... (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm not going to defend all of MS.
But to say it's stagnated is an overstatement. Windows 7 was decent. Windows Live Essentials is pretty decent (and free). Windows Live Mesh is pretty nice. That new kinect thing seems to have gotten favorable first impressions. Even IE 9 seems like it's going to be a huge improvement (perfect? of course not, but huge improvement).
Could they be better? Oh, definitely. Did they have rough years? Totally. Could they have done better? Of course. Are they actually "stagnated" right now? I don't really see that.
Re:Inquiring minds want to know... (Score:5, Interesting)
Windows 7 and Microsoft Office make up 95% of their profits, so the rest are-- to use an Apple phrase-- hobbies. They have subsidized XBox and Windows Phone 7 development with Windows/Office profits to the tune of billions of dollars. In 25 years they haven't created a new product line that's made more than a tiny fraction of their two big products. In comparison, Google didn't exist at all back then, and Apple gets 60% of its profits from products that didn't exist 4 years ago.