Here's a mystery for the morning.
Either Steve Ballmer bought 4% of Twitter shares, or his account was hacked and someone is pulling a prank.
A Steve Ballmer account tweeted:
But that Ballmer account is not verified.
Ballmer's verified Twitter account is @clippersteveb. But, on that account Ballmer has tweeted that he is transitioning to the @steven_ballmer account. Twice:
And today:
We've reached out to Twitter PR, and our contact at Microsoft to try to figure out if this is in fact a new account for Ballmer. It's early for them, so we have not heard back.
The @clippersteveb account could have been hacked then tweeted about the fake Steve Ballmer account. It would be a strange prank, but people have lots of time on their hands.
And, since people have noticed the account, it started tweeting that the account is real, which makes us think it is fake. (Real Ballmer isn't going to waste his time telling people his account is real.)
If it is real, then Ballmer has made a big bet on Twitter. Twitter is currently valued at $20 billion, so 4% of the company would be $800 million. (We have no idea when he bought so, this is a rough estimate.)
Twitter has been beat down by the public market as investors question whether it's ever going to be able to grow its user based to massive, Facebook-like levels. It just appointed Jack Dorsey as full-time CEO, but he's also running Square a payments company which is in the middle of an IPO.
So, in short: Lots of questions! But, apparently Ballmer is a believer.