Twitter is the New Celebrity Publicity Stunt
What Are Celebrities Doing on Twitter?
So what exactly are all these celebrities doing on Twitter? Even though celebrities are often later to adopt certain technologies once considered especially geeky, their adoption doesn't seem to fend off the faddish as our parents' adoption does. In fact, the celebrity use of Twitter is only helping drive more to the popular microblogging platform, as it seemingly justifies the service's popularity and value as a communication tool. But seriously. Why are the celebrities here?
For the same reason as everybody else. Twitter is an easy way to keep in touch with others, share mundane facts about your life that most people probably would never care about, and also build one's brand. What better way to portray yourself as a down-to-earth and accessible celebrity than to post frequently on your Twitter stream?
Those Trendy Celeb Twitterers...
The latest trend we're seeing on Twitter is actual celebrities taking control of their own Twitter streams, as opposed to letting their marketing or PR managers handle the task, as many celebrities have done with most social networking profiles and overall online engagement. And the celebrities are even talking to each other.
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The New York Times has commented on this current phenomenon, noting the constant back and forth the celebrities are having with each other via Twitter. It's easy enough to send a message to another Twitter user, whether the message is public or private. The New York Times has even gone so far as to post a "social graph" of sorts that displays the communication patterns amongst the stars.
The graphing of social interaction is nothing new: several third party applications, developers and Twitter itself has taken the time to map a given user's social reality across the Twitter network. Services like Mr. Tweet and Twitter Grader take this social interaction into consideration when determining the influence and importance of said Twitter user, calibrating who their messages are being sent to, and from whom they're receiving messages. Of course, this doesn't take into account any private messages that may be taking place between two Twitter users, celebrity or not.
The Twitter Elite
But it does bring us to another point regarding the public use of Twitter, and I'll reference an article previously written on this blog. When certain Twitter users allow unlimited followers but have a restricted number of those that they follow, it makes their intentions clearer, and also streamlines the amount of incoming messages from others. Nevertheless, such restrictions could make a Twitter user appear a bit snobbish, and in many ways it also makes them less accessible, as direct messages are not possible without mutual following settings. Perhaps that is the very reason why celebrities are so comfortable "being themselves" and interacting with each other on Twitter.
It also begs the question: what's next for Twitter and its rapidly growing flock of celebrity users? It's important to keep in mind the marketing power of Twitter. We here at MultiSocialMedia use Twitter for marketing purposes in spreading the word about our Twitter Survival Guide. Guy Kawasaki has deemed it one of the best online marketing tools around. And when building a brand of any sort, it doesn't hurt to be on Twitter. That goes for celebrities, too. Take into account a public Twitter message sent from Martha Stuart to Snoop Dogg, requesting the rapper to check out her dogs' new pet-themed blog.
Twitter is the New Celebrity Publicity Stunt
Doesn't this just scream publicity stunt? Whether the message was genuine or planted, the effect remains the same. Celebrities communicating with each other in such a manner boils down to recommendations that can be applied to us all. If we see Martha Stuart talking about her "doggie" blog, we're likely to check it out anyway. If we see her asking Snoop Dogg to check it out, we're even more likely to take a look. We're also going to be on the lookout for more celebrity-to-celebrity tweets. It's another form of people-watching, except tweets between two celebrities can amount to some decent gossip every so often.
And there are a number of initiatives from other blogging platforms, online magazine outlets and entertainment portals that have been trying to incorporate more genuine content from A- and B-level celebrities for years now. Tapping into celebrities' Twitter streams may be the perfect way in which to finally achieve these long-sought goals for building out their own content offerings. Any interest in this particular use of Twitter will also drive the type of features offered in the third-party applications using Twitter's API.
As a result, we may see more traditional media sectors looking to take over various aspects of Twitter, which also doesn't have the same negative connotation that it once did a few years back (remember MySpace?). Nevertheless, the future of celebrity branding and social networking has vastly changed thanks to tools like Twitter.
