Lloyd Blankfein has had an account on Twitter since 2011, but the Goldman Sachs CEO only began tweeting four and a half months ago. It’s too bad he held out on us all those years.
He has offered up 20 tweets since June 1, a pace of one per week, and they’re a satisfying mix of exactly what you’d expect from a Wall Street chieftain on Twitter (finance topics, weak emoji usage, and self-congratulatory messages about supporting diversity) and what you might actually hope to see (leadership, intelligence, flashes of authenticity, and the occasional sick burn).
His latest tweet, posted today, is perhaps his greatest yet.
It’s funny, smart, and sharp, all signs that he’s clearly getting more comfortable with the medium. Consider this doozy from June 2—the strangely spaced emoji, the multiple abbreviations, the caveman-like phrasing (“Bad if lost”). Trying to communicate big ideas about policy, culture, and the global economy, in 140 characters or less, is commendable, but it can take practice.
I hate to break it to Blankfein but that one easily could be mistaken for a Donald Trump tweet, although the intended policy conclusions no doubt would have been very different. And how do we know? Because it turns out that Blankfein, like pretty much everyone else on the platform, is very political on Twitter! Of his 20 tweets to date, half—including the two shared above—fall into the category of “blatantly political” or “subtly political.”
There are lots of other types of Blankfein tweets, though, each revealing a side of what already looks to be a complex Twitter persona. Let’s start with…
Thoughtful Lloyd Blankfein
Purveyor of dad jokes Lloyd Blankfein
Blatantly political and straightforward Lloyd Blankfein
Subtly political and sarcastic Lloyd Blankfein
Blatantly promotional and CEO-ish Lloyd Blankfein
(The latter was one he retweeted—his only straight retweet, without comment, to date.)