President Obama sent his first Twitter message this past Monday and following suit, Bill Gates, philanthropist and former chairman of Microsoft, has now joined the Usenet-esque site as well, sending out his first Twitter tweet yesterday.

The Usenet inspired service got its first “Hello World,” from Gates. “Hard at work on my foundation letter — publishing on 1/25.”  Gates shared. Bill Gates has tweeted five times since then, including re-tweets from US celebrity Ryan Seacrest and Time Magazine about efforts in Haiti as well as a message to another US celebrity, Ashton Kutcher, thanking him “and all the other people who have welcomed me.”

In the one day that Gates has been on Twitter, he has amassed almost 250,000 followers and has been included on more than 7,000 Twitter Lists. At this point, though, Gates is following only 40 people, including George Stephanopolous, Queen Rania Al Abdullah of Jordan, a handful of tech reporters, the White House and several humanitarian organizations like UNICEF. In his bio section on Twitter, Gates lists his hometown as Seattle, WA and says he’s interested in “Sharing cool things I’m learning through my foundation work and other interests.”

Gates’ joining coincided with the site being down for some time on Tuesday afternoon, prompting industry watchers to speculate whether this was the Bill affect. It is not known if Bill Gates has ever been or remains active with Usenet newsgroups. It is very possible that with the dozens of Microsoft newsgroups that exist – some that have actually been the first tier of support for customers since the early days – that indicate he has had some exposure to it in one fashion or another over time.

Gates had previously also joined and used Facebook to post pictures of his trips to Africa and India, as well as information about his philanthropic organization, The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.   Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates said he was forced to give up on the social networking phenomenon after too many people wanted to be his friend.  Gates, who remains Microsoft chairman, said he had trouble figuring out whether he “knew this person, did I not know this person”. “It was just way too much trouble so I gave it up,” Gates told the business forum. Twitter may cause the same frustration. Twitter time will tell.