30 entrepreneurs to follow on Twitter

Social networking website Twitter has exploded in popularity over recent months with many high profile figures signing up to the service. Among them are big name entrepreneurs who share their words of wisdom. Here are 30 of our favourite business tweeters. 

Duncan Bannatyne (2,058 followers)
A judge on Dragons' Den, Bannatyne's business interests include health clubs, hotels and schools. He ranked 167th in the 2009 Sunday Times Rich List with a personal wealth of £320m.

Deirdre Bounds (723 followers)
Bounds started travel company i-to-i and sold it to First Choice for £20m. She also appeared on Channel 4's Millionaire's Mission and recently set up ethical children's party business Parties Around the World.

Richard Branson (159,297 followers)
One of the most famous entrepreneurs in the world, Branson is the founder and chairman of Virgin Group. According to Forbes, he is the 261st richest personal in the world with an estimated net worth of £1.5bn.

James Caan (3,895 followers)
Caan, a panellist on Dragons' Den, is CEO of private equity firm Hamilton Bradshaw. He founded recruitment company Alexander Mann in 1985 which when he sold it in 2002 had an annual turnover of £130m.

Jason Calacanis (75,091 followers)
Web entrepreneur Calacanis founded Weblogs, a network of blogs supported by advertising, before selling it to internet service provider AOL for $30m.

Ryan Carson (16,315 followers)
Colorado-born Carson is the founder of Carsonified, a company based in Bath, Somerset which creates web applications and runs events, conferences and workshops. 

Steve Case (17,578 followers)
Case is the co-founder and former chief executive and chairman of American Online (AOL). In January 2001, AOL merged with Time Warner in a deal worth $164m.

Peter Cashmore (1,292,109 followers)
Cashmore is the founder of Mashable, a highly popular blog about social media which launched in 2005. According to social bookmarking website Technorati, Mashable is one of the top 20 blogs in the world.  

Michelle Dewberry (7,642 followers)
Dewberry shot to fame after winning the second series of BBC TV show The Apprentice. She worked for Sir Alan Sugar for eight months before launching consultancy business Michelle Dewberry Ltd and money saving website Chiconomise.com.

Jack Dorsey (1,085,259 followers)
Dorsey is an American businessman best known for being the creator of Twitter. He was CEO of the company until Evan Williams took over and he became chairman. BusinessWeek described Dorsey as one of technology's "best and brightest".

Rachel Elnaugh (825 followers)
Elnaugh is a former panellist on Dragons' Den. She started experiences company Red Letter Days and grew it to a £17.5m operation but in 2005 the company went into administration. It was bought by Elnaugh's fellow dragons Peter Jones and Theo Paphitis. She is now a business speaker and advisor.

Caterina Fake (8,486 followers)
Fake is the co-founder of Flickr, the photo sharing service acquired by Yahoo! in 2005. In 2006, Fake was named by Time magazine as one of world's most influential people. Earlier this year, she launched Hunch, a collective intelligence decision making system

Brent Hoberman (1,341 followers)
Hoberman started Lastminute.com with Martha Lane Fox before selling it for £577m. He currently runs interior design website MyDeco.com and recently launched an investment fund for technology start-ups with Michael Birch, founder of social network Bebo.

Tony Hsieh (1,146,579 followers)
Hsieh is the founder of US-based online shoe retailer Zappos.com, a company recognised as having one of the most successful corporate social media strategies. Zappos was sold to Amazon in July 2009 for around $887m.

Peter Jones (5,471 followers)
Jones, who has an estimated wealth of £158m, is a panellist on BBC TV's Dragons' Den. He has made most of his money in the telecoms sector and has recently launched the government-backed National Enterprise Academy.

Guy Kawasaki (162,120 followers)
Kawasaki is a Silicon Valley venture capitalist who was one of the Apple employees responsible for marketing the Macintosh computer in the 1980s. He is currently managing director of Garage Technology Ventures.

Martha Lane Fox (3,124 followers)
Lane Fox co-founded lifestyle website Lastminute.com during the dotcom boom of the early 2000s. She is currently a board member of Channel 4 and non-executive director of Marks & Spencer. Lane Fox was recently appointed as the government's digital tsar.

Craig Newark (14,353 followers)
An internet entrepreneur who is best known for founding Craigslist, a San Francisco-based website providing classified ads in more than 500 cities in 50 countries.

Pierre Omidyar (11,027 followers)
Omidyar is the founder of auction website eBay. The French-born Iranian American entrepreneur, named by Forbes as the 156th richest person in the world, also makes philantrophic investments through the Omidyar Network which he set up with his wife Pam.

Tim O'Reilly (941,366 followers)
O'Reilly is the founder of O'Reilly Media which publishes books and websites and runs conferences focusing on technology. A supporter of open source software, he is credited with coming up with the term 'Web 2.0'.

Doug Richard (391 followers)
Richard, who is originally from California, is a UK-based technology entrepreneur. He appeared as a panellist in two series of BBC programme Dragons' Den. He currently runs business training company School for Startups.

Amanda Rose (7,022 followers)
Canadian-born UK-based entrepreneur who is most well known for creating Twestival, a charity event in cities around the world run by volunteers via Twitter. 

Kevin Rose (1,187,091 followers)
The US internet entrepreneur is best known for founding social bookmarking website Digg.com. Rose started the company with $6,000, money which was meant to be a deposit on a house for himself and his girlfriend.

Jonathan Schwartz (3,544 followers)
Schwartz is president and CEO of Sun Microsystems. As one of the few Fortune 500 CEO bloggers, Schwartz is recognised for his attempts to bring greater transparency into the corporate world.

Martha Stewart (1,255,584 followers)
The American business woman, TV host, author and magazine publisher was sent to prison in 2004 for stock trading violations but after being released launched a highly publicised comeback including presenting the US version of The Apprentice.

Biz Stone (1,119,134 followers)
Stone is the co-founder and creative director of Twitter. He was previously involved in building other social media services including Google's Blogger.

Gary Vaynerchuk (868,235 followers)  
The Russian-born entrepreneur who emigrated to the US in 1978 is the co-owner of Wine Library, a New Jersey-based wine retailer. He gained fame in the US as host of Wine Library TV, an internet video blog about wine. 

Ben Way (1,012 followers)
Way is a British entrepreneur who started his first business aged 15 and raised raised £25m in venture capital when he was 19. In 2006, he appeared on Channel 4's The Secret Millionaire and gave away £40,000 after spending two weeks in east London.

Jack Welch (658,856 followers) 
The former CEO and chairman of General Electric, Welch is recognised for his leadership skills. He has an estimated personal wealth of $720m.

Evan Williams (1,197,795 followers)
The other co-founder of Twitter, Williams replaced Jack Dorsey as chief executive of Twitter in 2008. He is known for inventing the term 'blogger' and helping to popularise the term 'blog'.

Follower figures correct as of 18 August 2009.

Have we missed off your favourite entrepreneurial tweeters? Please post your recommendations below.