Current Twitter trends: Bill Gates joins Twitter, Shorty Awards

(2009 Twitter)

Microsoft founder Bill Gates has finally joined the Twitter revolution, gaining more than 100,000 followers in less than eight hours from the time of signing up.

The term "Bill Gates Surpasses" leaped into Twitter's most talked about topics on January 20 as people retweeted technology blog Mashable's article headline, "Bill Gates Surpasses 100,000 Twitter Followers in 8 Hours."

'"Hello World. Hard at work on my foundation letter - publishing on 1/25," wrote Gates in his first Twitter post before retweeting Ryan Seacrest's post, "Just got a call from CNN. Here are the final numbers raised from last night's show.. for UNICEF + American Red Cross $8,944,956 Thank You!"

Microsoft's chairman then wrote, "I've got a lot to learn about Twitter but look forward to sharing more."

Nominations for the 'Golden Globes of Twitter' (also known as the Shorty Awards) have helped the term "Shorty Awards" become a regular fixture in Twitter's trending topics.

Twitter users are nominating the people and organizations they believe were the most interesting microbloggers during 2009 via 140 character tweets.

"#arealwifey" has dropped three places to the number four position and "Haiti" has jumped up one spot to second place.

The top 10 most talked about topics on Twitter on January 20 at 9:30 AM GMT are:

1. #nowplaying (+1)
2. Haiti (+1)
3. Shorty Award (new)
4. #arealwifey (-3)
5. #ihatequotes (new)
6. Bill Gates Surpasses (new)
7. #fistpump (new)
8. Massachusetts (new)
9. Goodnight (+1)
10. IPL (new)