{"id":37226,"date":"2013-05-06T13:24:59","date_gmt":"2013-05-06T11:24:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=37226"},"modified":"2013-05-07T08:36:55","modified_gmt":"2013-05-07T06:36:55","slug":"buffett-talks-social-media-and-bitcoin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/trending\/37226\/buffett-talks-social-media-and-bitcoin\/","title":{"rendered":"Buffett talks social media and Bitcoin"},"content":{"rendered":"

The worlds most recognised investor, business magnate, and philanthropist, Warren Buffett<\/a> has provided his opinion on the growing importance of social media and the significance of digital currency, Bitcoin.<\/p>\n

Buffett, who has a net worth of $53.5 billion according to the most recent Forbes data, is the CEO of Berkshire Hathaway<\/a>, a diversified company with major interest in Geico, life insurance, annuity sales and sales of jewellery.<\/p>\n

The 82 year old was speaking at the company\u2019s annual shareholder meeting in Omaha Nebraska on the weekend (4 May), where Berkshire Hathaway reported that first quarter revenue grew 15% to $43.9 billion, while profit jumped 51%.<\/p>\n

Buffett logged on to Twitter for the first time last week (2 May), and has already amassed 389,723 followers.<\/p>\n

\"Buffett's<\/a>

Buffett’s first tweet<\/p><\/div>\n

On Saturday (4 May), some 35,000 people descended on Omaha\u2019s CenturyLink Center to attend Berkshire Hathaway\u2019s AGM.<\/p>\n

Buffett was asked how social media has impacted Berkshire\u2019s business.<\/p>\n

“At a place like Geico it makes a difference and over time it will make a huge difference. We have to listen to our customers. I’ve been amazed at how the world has changed,” he said (transcribed by Reuters).<\/p>\n

Another question posed to Buffett was around company\u2019s being able to disclose financial material on Twitter.<\/p>\n

In April, the\u00a0Securities and Exchange Commission<\/a>\u00a0issued a report that makes clear that companies can use social media outlets like Facebook and Twitter to announce key information in compliance with Regulation Fair Disclosure (Regulation FD) so long as investors have been alerted about which social media will be used to disseminate such information.<\/p>\n

“The key to disclosure is accuracy and simultaneity … I do not want it, if I am buying Wells Fargo, to keep hitting up their web page and hoping I’m not 10 seconds behind someone else for some important announcement,\u201d Buffett said.<\/p>\n

According to Wall Street Journal, a shareholder in the audience asked a question about Bitcoin.<\/p>\n

Charles Munger, vice chairman at Berkshire Hathaway said: “I have no confidence whatsoever in Bitcoin being a universal currency.”<\/p>\n

Buffett professed to know nothing about it. “I\u2019ll put it this way, of our $49 billion, we haven\u2019t moved any of it to Bitcoin,” he said.<\/p>\n

When asked about his future, Buffett said: “There’s nothing more fun for me than to find something to add to Berkshire\u2026I hope its true 10 years from now.”<\/p>\n

More on Warren Buffett and social media<\/h3>\n

The world\u2019s richest people<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

The world\u2019s billionaires get even richer<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Bitcoin volatility due to growing pains: backer<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Beware putting trust in Twitter<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Warren Buffett has provided his opinion on the growing importance of social media and the significance of digital currency, Bitcoin.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":37221,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[5767,5537,45,5768,26,93],"class_list":["post-37226","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-trending","tag-berkshire-hathaway","tag-bitcoin","tag-facebook","tag-geico","tag-headline","tag-twitter"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37226","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37226"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37226\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":37228,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37226\/revisions\/37228"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/37221"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37226"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37226"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37226"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}