He'll never be as eagerly public as Kim Kardashian, but notoriously private pop icon Prince joined Twitter on Tuesday, using a verified account already established for use by his three-woman band, 3rd Eye Girl.
It's a surprising turnaround because in 2010, the "Purple Rain" star famously told Britain's Daily Mirror that "the Internet's completely over," comparing it to MTV as something that had its heyday, then faded.
The 3rd Eye Girl account had already been up and running since January, but Prince himself hadn't joined in until Tuesday.
Like most Twitter users, he started slow, with a couple "testing" posts.
And then he slyly jumped in with one of the classic Twitter stereotypical posts -- a picture of his meal, in this case, a salad liberally doused with pepper, incorporating his trademark Prince spelling preferences.
He then tweeted a photo of himself with the caption "hi im prince," which turned out to have been taken from a Funny or Die parody post in which the site pretended to be Prince recapping the South by Southwest music festival in Austin, Tex.
Jake Fogelnest, the author of that humor piece, tweeted in disbelief, "Prince joined Twitter. His first tweet from @3rdeyegirl used this photo from my @PrinceTweets2U @funnyordie article?"
Yes, it did. And later on, Prince showed a true sense for another Twitter stereotype -- the poorly taken "selfie," or self-portrait, posting a dark photo of smoke and dubbing it "1st selfie."
He also poked fun at his reputation for sending his legal team after online sites that post his music without permission. Although it's gone now, Billboard magazine reports that the account posted a video of Prince and his band performing the "Purple Rain" classic "Let's Go Crazy," with the caption: ""CATCH THIS NOW B4 MY LAWYERS DEW."
Some fans wondered if it was really The Purple One posting, but multiple sources in a position to know confirmed that it was. After tweeting, "I knew you'd give in," musician Questlove acknowledged that not every tweet from the band's account came from Prince, but that some did. (Questlove should know -- he once went roller-skating with Prince.)
And Tatiana Grace Simonian, the head of artist and industry relations for music at Twitter, confirmed with the musician's reps that some of the new tweets were indeed from Prince himself.
Fans accustomed to Prince's reclusiveness were thrilled, and responded with disbelief and humor.
And as of Wednesday morning, it appeared the musician was still at it, tweeting a link to a profile of himself from V Magazine and a link to a YouTube audio snippet from "Groovy Potential," a new song for the artist and 3rd Eye Girl.