Candid photos, home-made video, details of their personal lives- what more could celebrity-crazed America want from their favorite stars? And even better, all that voyeuristic content is being produced by the celebrities themselves, posted to the Internet instantaneously.
With the publishing-made-easy format of the social network, Twitter gives celebrities their own voices and the ability to connect directly with their fans — instantly and whenever they want.
Back up, what is it?
Twitter is a micro-blogging Web site. Unlike Facebook or Myspace, there are no photo albums or walls, just 140 character status updates that can be made from the web or a cell phone. It’s painfully simple, but highly effective.
Once you sign up for Twitter, you can “follow” other people. You don’t have to know them personally, you just have to be interested in what those people are talking about. Because Twitter is all about the conversation.
Celebrities on Twitter
By using Twitter, celebrities don’t have to go through a public relations person or hold a press conference or a backstage event to talk to fans or clear up rumors. Celebrities can just be themselves and say what’s on their minds.
And that’s just what they do.
“You have two choices on a boat rocking in rough seas,” musician song-writer John Mayer tweeted Monday evening while traveling. “Think about getting sick or play Van Halen and pretend it’s an amusement park ride.”
Mayer twitters so frequently that it cost him his relationship with Aniston (a non-twitterer), but that’s another column in and of itself.
Other stars in the Twitterverse are Ashton Kutcher and his wife Demi Moore, P-Diddy, Jimmy Fallon, Shaquille O’Neal, Lance Armstrong and Ellen Degeneres , just to name a few of the most popular.
Authentic vs. ghost twitterers
First we need to make a distinction. There’s a difference between true celebrity Twitterers and celebrities who hire public relations staff to update their Twitter (and you can always tell the difference).
All of the aforementioned twitterers update their own accounts from their computers and cell phones.
Britney Spears and Barack Obama are examples of famous people who don’t maintain their own accounts.
“Make sure you guys vote for Britney in Time Magazine’s 100 most influential people!” tweeted her manager, Adam Leber, last week.
Spears’ account is updated very infrequently and by people other than herself, thus eliminating the freedom factor. It’s far less interesting than authentic twitterers who let us into their minds and lives without the oversight of managers.
How celebs are connecting to their fans
Katie Tamse, a student in Maryland, recently received a custom-made Twitter background from Mayer himself.
“I am looking for someone that I can design a Twitter page for,” Mayer tweeted. “Best reply wins a hand-drawn, scanned and e-mailed background for their page.”
Tamse’s winning response: “I should win because I wrote a three page paper based (off) something you said about iPods!”
Shortly after Mayer announced that Tamse was the winner, he asked her via Twitter to tell him more about herself so he could incorporate personal elements into the art.
In no other medium would a celebrity be able to interact with fans so directly and easily.
And he’s not only doing it in the cyberworld.
Last week, Mayer posted a photo of his friend and his brother on Twitter with an address and said the first two to find them get free tickets to his Mayercraft concert – including backstage access. The two winners had their photos taken by Mayer and posted to his Twitter.
What it means for tabloids
There’s a whole new relationship developing between the common people and the stars.
Although it won’t be enough to put the tabloids out of business yet, the potential is there.
Celebrities are filling the voyeuristic void fans crave without being filtered through the sensationalism of mass media.
From their cell phones and within their homes, celebs are posting photos and videos from their lives. The best example of this is Ashton Kutcher and Demi Moore, who stream live video from their home via a cell phone camera.
Through Twitter, celebrities are showing us the thoughts that tabloid-based “friend-of-a-friend” sources could never reveal. We’re hearing about their lives straight from their mouths (or keyboards, rather).
And then there’s the flip side: They’re reading about our lives at the same time. Unlike a tabloid that exploits the famous in a one-way channel, Twitter allows for the two-way interaction.
So while the death of the tabloid or “E!” news may still be decades in the distance, it’s not impossible. As the Internet continues to evolve, it will only open more doors for the famous and the rest of us to communicate freely.
Lauren Rabaino is a journalism sophomore and the Mustang Daily online and multimedia editor.