Twitter is a micro blogging free platform that allows anyone to sign up, create a name and send out updates to the world in 140 characters or less. It seems that Hollywood has finally caught on to the buzz that some of us geeks have known for far to long, twitter is cool. So you might ask how popular is Twitter ? Many celebrities and PR firms have been showing up on twitter over last few months. Some of the most well known are Britney Spears, Ashton Kutcher, Sean Diddy Combs, and Shaq O’neal. While there are a grip more of them out there, I don’t have enough strength to mention them all.
As a enthusiastic twitter user for almost 2 years, I was never into following someone just because they ask me to, or because the flock of sheep all ran to the new Joe in town. My network has been small and focused on technology tweets. In the beginning I would look for people to follow who were all about technology, But Something happen along the way as twitter became more and more popular. I noticed celebrities joining twitter in small numbers at first. In the beginning many of us would follow a celebrity only to find out later that it was an impostor. Twitter has never implemented a way to confirm that someone was who they said they were. Typically a celebrity (REAL or FAKE) would join today and by 5 P.M. tomorrow they would have thousands of loyal sheep.
This got me to thinking, and reminded me of high school where the popular people became more and more popular. While the less popular continue to be harassed and abused on a daily basis by some “School Celebs.” Popularity usually came in two forms in High School, one was usually the Jocks who gained fame off of sports, and the others were dubbed “The Beautiful People” These beautifuls’ usually hung out together and unless you were beautiful you couldn’t get a pass to that group.
So what does all this mean to the community of twitter. In my opinion it means get ready to get your lunch money stolen by one of the jocks or and don’t even think of looking at the beautiful ones. I say Twitter is about community, and connections both which are mostly ignored by most celebrities. Just take a moment to look at most celebrity profiles on twitter. Most of them have tons of followers; some have hundreds of thousands and now over 1 million. How many are they following? Less than one hundred in most cases. The truth is they only follow the other celebrities and people they know, which probably is NOT YOU!
So this phenomenon begs the question Why? Why do we care so much about the celebs and they care so little about us? Most of the celebs only follow other celebs hence my comparison to the beautiful people. In high school why did the beautiful ones hang and socialize with other beautiful ones? Most often it was because if they were caught with someone less beautiful their so called friends would make fun of them. In the online world how does this equate? I’m really not sure, I mean is there someone (consultant to the stars) out there that has scared the celebs into thinking that associating with real everyday common people could be a recipe for disaster? Maybe the media has helped in this false sense of thinking. Maybe because they don’t want a trail of breadcrumbs leading back to them. While some celebs have tried to engage this vast and wonderful community, others have not. Far too often most will never follow you back, an even more so they will probably never speak to you.
Twitter is about community, communications, and contact. Why have the celebrities come? I think the celebs are here for only one thing, communication. Some agent or consultant has explained to them that they need not follow everyone for reasons unknown to me. Celebs are doing to twitter what they did to the tabloids they say how much they don’t want it, then they go to a place where they can spread the roamers and lies themselves, thus creating a full market for their next project. It goes to show you how shallow most consultants and so called Guru’s are on twitter.
So I simply have one question for every celeb on twitter. I can say real Hollywood celebs down to the social celebs.
WHY ARE YOU REALLY HERE? You don’t engage the community in conversation with you most times your just passing through with a thought or your motivational tweet is a copy of a Winston Churchill famous quote. Why treats us your community like this is high school again. I lived that life 20 years ago I don’t want to live it again. You keep talking, but what are you really saying?
Jayson Flint
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i have personally vowed to not follow the trend of following celeb tweeters, specifically because i want to keep my connects as “personal” as possible. considering celeb tweeters don’t return the favour, and i consider myself to be just as important (if not more) than they are in my life… i simply don’t have time for the one way communication stream. i do follow john mayer and matthew perry simply because i find their updates hilarious… but that’s about it. the rest, i can read about in magazines or hear about on E!.