Five tweets of fame?
2011 was undoubtedly the year of twitter domination, with the newly formed social networking site taking the world by storm. The digital form, created in 2006 has boomed in popularity over the past few years with famous socialites giving people an insight into their lives on a regular basis. With 21st century culture being so engrossed in the world of ‘celebrity’ and all its scandal its unsurprising that this small link to the media makes the average Joe feel like they have a front row ticket to all the celebrity gossip as and when it unfolds.
Twitters constant growth has been greatly determined by the popularity of the Smartphone making it possible to tweet and keep in social contact at any point throughout the day. With this popular choice of interaction at the touch of a button it is unsurprising that twitter has become an outlet for people to voice controversial opinions with the ability to directly reference people, while ‘trending’ hash tags to coincide. The media, along with the rest of the world have embraced this new way of connecting and many celebrities are using Twitter to interact with their fans on a daily basis. This is echoed through the popularity of reality shows such as The Only Way is Essex and Geordie shore rising in 2011 which showed the reality TV personalities using twitter as a channel to speak to the public and their fans; creating a direct web chat, attempting to solidify their five minutes of fame for as long as possible. Although twitter does have its promotional advantages and is designed to keep online connections alive it has its downfalls. With the freedom of speech comes opinionated followers which can often cause heated online debates between celebrities and the general public.
So why do celebrities use social networks? The phrase no publicity is bad publicity is something which springs to mind when describing celebrities on Twitter as it is undoubtedly one of the most beneficial PR tools in the 21st century. Twitter is an easy access point for celebrities and businesses to reach the cliental which have an interest in them; enabling them to create an online fan bass which can continuously grow. The effortless act of creating a Twitter account can be deemed strategic PR and has the ability to gain an online reputation instantly, when in the right hands. Twitter has constantly made the headlines in 2011 with controversy over drug taking reality stars, short-lived marriages and the questionable media fuelled break down of Charlie Sheen; and I’m sure no one can predict how far celebrity tweeting will go in 2012.
