Rupert Murdoch. Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

Rupert Murdoch opened a Twitter account over the New Year's holiday, and already had more than 50,000 followers as of midday today. (He's @rupertmurdoch if you want to join the crowd.)  He's started promoting some of his media properties, and already deleted at least one controversial tweet.

"Great oped in WSJ today on Ron Paul," read one of his first tweets on Saturday (Murdoch's News Corp. owns the Wall Street Journal). "Huge appeal of libertarian message."

"Saw Fox film Descendants," said another (Murdoch's empire includes Fox). "Thank God, one to be proud of."

Somewhere along the line, he apparently also tweeted, "Maybe Brits have too many holidays for broke country!" If you look at his feed, it's already gone. Another Twitter user, @Wendy_Deng (not a verified account, but Wendy Deng is the name of Murdoch's wife), urged him to take it down, and tweeted that Murdoch was only joking.

Murdoch, now 80, has mostly kept his views to himself since the phone-hacking scandal that led to the closing of News Corp.'s London-based tabloid The News of the World, but News International - and Twitter chairman Jack Dorsey - both confirmed that @rupertmurdoch is the real Rupert Murdoch.

He was apparently on vacation when he started on Saturday, and complained that the pricey Caribbean island of St. Bart's had "too many people." He called Mike Bloomberg "New York's best mayor in memory!" He had kind words for Rick Santorum: "Good to see santorum surging in Iowa. Regardless of policies, all debates showed principles, consistency and humility like no other."

After 17 tweets in two days, he wrote, "Back to work tomorrow. Enough idling!" One of his last updates: "I'm getting killed for fooling around here and friends frightened what I may really say!"