Stop what you’re doing right now (reading this) and go look at Google CEO Eric Schmidt’s latest Twitter profile picture. Now look closer. Yes, it appears he’s wearing a flak jacket, also known as a bullet-proof vest.
As the New York Times’ Nick Bilton points out, this picture likely comes from a recent trip Schmidt took to Iraq. That makes sense, but the fact that Schmidt put the effort and the thought into changing his picture from a bland old corporate profile one, to this badass one, is pretty awesome. Just as with Facebook profile pictures, Twitter profile pictures are becoming a defining characteristic of everyone’s online identity. And because of that, Schmidt may just be one of the baddest men on Twitter (in a good way, like Shaft).
Schmidt made headlines last month when he finally signed up for Twitter after seemingly dismissing it as somewhat trivial earlier in the year. However, when he first joined, he was stuck with the awful AOL-era generic name, @eschmidt0. Within a day, he had secured the more appropriate @ericschmidt moniker.
And while he still may not be tweeting a whole lot (he’s currently up to 8 tweets in just about a month of tweeting), the profile picture just bought him a lot of Twitter cred, in my book, at least. Unless that’s a lead jacket you put on when you’re about to get an x-ray at the doctor’s office. If that’s the case, forget everything I just said.
[via Brian Lam]