Twitter is brilliant, brilliant, brilliant for famous people
If you’re famous, get on Twitter.
Most definitely.
That is the way ahead for any A-lister and most certainly any B, C an D lister. Because the system is dead-easy to use — you CAN do it from your complimentary Blackberry (if you’re A-list), your pimped-out iPhone 3G or from the desktop of your rubbish 3-year old Packard Bell laptop (if you’re D-list). And it cuts, cuts, cuts straight through the celebrity magazine lifestyle rubbish.
All of a sudden you’ve got your own real-time broadcast and response mechanism. You’ve stripped out your publicist (in many cases), you’ve stripped out your manager, their assistants and the various other hangers-on. You finally have a voice again.
The next time Heat magazine quote you incorrectly, you can get in there, within minutes, telling your subscribers how stupid the journalist is and how wholly incorrect their story is. All of a sudden you’ve got a backchannel — a hugely, hugely influential backchannel — that totally destroys the authority of the existing celebrity (and mainstream) news media.
Where these chaps were once in full control — the final authority — not any more. All of a sudden they’re now quoting the Twitter-feeds of celebrities as a source of news. Or to confirm a story. It won’t be long, I don’t think, before the tables are wholly turned and the celebrity media is forced to continually fact-check against Twitter-feeds. Because if they don’t — and their readers begin to follow the celebrity Twitter-feeds directly, their authority is very carefully eroded.
You may well be entertained by a story about a celebrity apparently snogging someone — but when you check their Twitter-feed telling you that ‘Ahh, that journalist has always hated me. Check out all the other rubbish they’ve written about me here’ … deary me… who are you going to believe.
Well it’s never, ever been about the magazines and television shows. They’re the gateway to the celebrities. If you can get that — in the rough, real-time, unfiltered by editors with their own agendas — isn’t that the biggest drug of all?
Take Mr Stephen Fry for example. (His Twitter feed is here). I thoroughly enjoy any appearance I see of him on television. Whether he’s talking about his personal past, getting a massage on an exotic beach whilst discussing Blackadder, or hosting his show, QI, bring it on. I’ll tune into his Guardian pieces. But it’s not enough.
You know how it is. Find a celebrity that you enjoy watching/hearing/reading and you want a bit more. You’re always left shortchanged by the mainstream media. So tune in directly to their Twitter.
I can see a huge growth for Twitter in this area in terms of attracting the normobs. The folk who don’t understand and simply don’t care about Twitter. But they care about celebrities and they’ll most certainly tune in directly if they are educated enough about it.
Speaking of which, it appears that Jonathan Ross (@wossy) has asked if Stephen Fry — appearing on Ross’ new show this month — would be interested in Twittering live during the show.
If that happens, you can now leverage the X million people watching BBC1 and get’em signed up to Twitter and your feed.
I wonder just how many people would jump on to their respective feeds. A 10% bump? 100%? 500%? That remains to be seen.
So whilst I will continue to have a real problem reading Twitter streams from folk about their coffee or their breakfast, I — interestingly — am quite content to read about a parrot shagging Stephen Fry’s leg.
