(Image source: Wikimedia Commons)

BY ADAM FALK AND LAUREN ZIMA

Get ready to follow someone new on Twitter: NewsCorp mogul Rupert Murdoch has joined, and already, his Tweets are ripe for criticism. On Sunday -- Murdoch sent out this Tweet:

“Maybe Brits have too many holidays for broke country!”

To which his wife, Wendi Deng, quickly replied:

“@rupertmurdoch RUPERT!!! delete tweet!”

But, too late. The Tweet has already caused major controversy -- especially because the media mogul sent it out while on a holiday vacation of his own in the Caribbean. Murdoch says he was just, quote, “fooling around.” The Sydney Morning Herald says many were skeptical of the account’s authenticity in the first place.

“The decision of the octogenarian billionaire to embrace Twitter has been greeted with surprise by many, given his previous view of the [Internet] as the home of ‘porn, thievery and hackers’ … Joining Twitter would be the strongest sign yet that Mr Murdoch has moved away from what was previously a strongly held antipathy towards the web, which has caused massive profit slumps in traditional media.”

But, Murdoch’s account has been verified. London Loves Business says it hopes for more Tweets from the 80-year-old, and had a zinger at the ready.

“Murdoch has already demonstrated the kind of injudiciousness we can but hope to report again soon … Unfortunately for Murdoch, it’s not quite as easy to delete tweets as it is to erase other people’s voicemail messages.”

But CNET says Murdoch is still a media powerhouse, and he seems to be using Twitter to his advantage.

“As head of News Corp., Rupert Murdoch is one of the most powerful media personalities on the planet … Unsurprisingly, most missives seem to be News Corp.-related with a tweet each for Fox pictures ‘The Descendants’ and the-plot-is-in-the-title ‘We Bought a Zoo.’” 

As of Monday afternoon, Murdoch already had more than 60,000 followers -- but he was following just four --  Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, Zynga founder Mark Pincus, an unverified account of Google co-founder Larry Page, and Lord Alan Sugar.