With the news today that billionaire investor Carl Icahn is getting ready to start blogging, we started to wonder what other billionaires blog. Sadly (or perhaps not so sadly), not many of them blog. Why should we care if a billionaire blogs? After all, they only represent the tiniest fraction of the population (there are at last count 946 billionaires worldwide compared to about 6.6 billion people). Really, you might not care about the things a billionaire might write about, but along with controlling a disproportionally large amount of the world’s money, they also wield a lot of power over our daily lives as a result. So it might be nice to see what goes on in their heads.
Billionaire Bloggers
Name: Carl Icahn
Worth: $14.5 Billion
Blog:The Icahn Report
What It’s Like: The only thing Icahn’s blog has up right now is a notice saying that the blog is coming soon. But for a man who is so known for trying to publicly control the companies he invests in, I think we can expect a lot of posts about what direction his thinks specific business should take.
Name: Mark Cuban
Worth: $2.8 Billion
Blog:Blog Maverick
What It’s Like: Mark Cuban is probably the best known billionaire blogger. As both a technology entrepreneur and the owner of a professional sports team, Cuban uses his blog to opine on everything from business to sports to ethics to the trials and tribulations of Facebook account maintenance (handy if you too have 5000 friends on the network…). It’s not quite the must-read that Marc Andreesen‘s blog has become, but it is still worth checking out.
Name: Donald Trump
Worth: $3.5 billion
Blog:The Trump Blog
What It’s Like: Ah, Trump. The billionaire real estate magnate cum TV celebrity writes a blog about business (along with a few other contributors) on his Trump University web site. Trump University is a non-accredited online university that sells correspondence courses in real estate and entrepreneurship. It has also been accused of spamming prospective students. Which is fitting given that Trump’s blog, which is plastered in ads for his books and other products, feels like one giant ad.
Name: Pierre Omidyar
Worth: $8.8 billion
Blog:Pierre’s blog
What It’s Like: The wealthy founder of eBay may have been the first billionaire to blog, when he started writing on on a TypePad blog in May, 2003. But after 3 years of no updates, Pierre shifted his blogging to Vox late last year. Mostly, though, his Vox blog is just a feed of his Twitter stream. It’s an interesting peek at the daily thoughts of one of the web’s most influential people, but we miss his full blog, on which he used to write at length about political and social issues (he still writes about his dislike of the Bush administration on his Vox blog, but it seems less often).
Name: George Soros
Worth: $8.5 Billion
Blog:George Soros
What It’s Like: Ok, George Soros doesn’t really blog. Just once, on the Huffington Post. In his single stint at blogging, Soros wrote about how the concept of the war on terror is self-defeating and framing US policy inside it isn’t doing the country any favors. But his post is tainted when you realize his one foray into the blogosphere coincided with the publication of his book about the war on terror. In otherwords, even though his ideas may be valid, the entire thing was a political stunt.
Name: J.K. Rowling
Worth: $1 Billion
Blog:J.K. Rowling’s Diary
What It’s Like: Ah, here we go, a best selling author. Certainly J.K. Rowling must have an awesome blog, right? Not so much. The Diary section of Rowling’s official site is a little weak. A not-so-often updated single page with no archives. I’m not even sure that qualifies as a blog, and I can’t help but think her fans must be somewhat disappointed by it. Rowling also appears to pen the news section of her site, which is a bit more interesting, has archives, and is updated slightly more frequently. But even so… no comments? No thoughts about the writing process, other literature, the decline of reading in society, your philanthropic work? C’mon, Ms. Rowling, give us a little more, please.
Name: Jerry Yang and David Filo
Worth: $2.2 and $2.5 Billion
Blog:Yodel Anecdotal
What It’s Like: Though not exclusively theirs, Yahoo! founders Jerry Yang and David Filo do occasionally contribute to the company’s corporate blog. Though Filo has written less recently, his posts tend to be more interesting, often concerning the environment or things outside of the Yahoo! product line or business.
Name: Steve Jobs
Worth: $5.7 Billion
Blog:The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs
What It’s Like: Jobs is one lucky billionaire… he doens’t have to lift a finger to blog his every thought. Who needs the real Steve Jobs when you’ve got a perfectly good fake one already?
Who We Want to See Blog
The list of billionaires who blog is rather paltry (let us know if we missed any). So below are some of people on the billionaire list we wish blogged, and why.
Name: Oprah Winfrey
Worth: $1.5 Billion
Why: Oprah has her hand in just about every other type of media, so why not blogging? She’s one of the most influential women in America and her opinions are closely followed by millions of people — she’s even recently shown that she can have an effect on US politics. What better way to connect to fans than through a blog?
Name: Sir Richard Branson
Worth: $3.8 Billion
Why: The man does crazy things like try to fly around the world in a balloon. You try telling me that his blog wouldn’t be interesting to read…
Name: Meg Whitman
Worth: $1.3 Billion
Why: If the rumors are true that Meg Whitman is planning to run for the governorship of California, it would be wise to start blogging and getting her ideas out there.
Name: Bill Gates
Worth: $56 Billion
Why: Not only is he the richest man in the world, but Bill Gates is about to step down from day-to-day work at Microsoft. He’ll have plenty of time to start blogging, and given all the charity work he is involved in through his foundation, I’m sure he has a lot to say about the state of the world.
Name: Michael Bloomberg
Worth: $5.5 Billion
Why: Bloomberg, who is the well-liked mayor New York City, recently left the Republican party and rumors persist that he is mulling a presidential run in the US. It’s starting to get a little late for that, but he has a lot of interesting ideas on pressing issues like the environment that we’d love to hear, if not as part of a presidential platform, then on a blog.
Name: Eric Schmidt
Worth: $6.2 Billion
Why: Our post about the Google CEO’s take on web 3.0 remains one of our most popular of all time. Clearly, people are interested in what Schmidt has to say.
Name: George Lucas
Worth: $3.6 Billion
Why: Because we’re nerds…
