Celebrity Twitter Update

After blogging about celebrities on Twitter a while back, I decided it was time to test the theory further. I had already begun following a number of celebrities and began to monitor their tweets a little closer. My initial blog post about one-way communication among celebrities and their followers still rings true. As Twitter evolves, this is not true in all cases.

It’s typical to find John Mayer tweeting about nonsense and Britney Spears tweeting about her trials and tribulations, but announcing a breakup on Twitter is a new phenomenon. Celebrities use Twitter as a way to send out messages to their fans, keeping them informed and making them priorities. Jim Carrey’s recent announcement of a breakup with long-time girlfriend, Jenny McCarthy over Twitter was an interesting way to make followers/fans feel in the know and important. Celebrity breakups are often dissected on twitter but never announced using this social media tool. Is this a good thing? What was the real intention behind it?

Not all celebrities would agree but a crowd of attentive Web users could become an audience for marketing or branding tool. This is beneficial for some of the more “washed up” celebrities that try to remain current and in the spotlight.

Take Alyssa Milano for example. She has an unbalanced number of the people she follows to those that follow her, but those that she follows she communicates with on a weekly basis. With her new show debuting last week, she uses Twitter as a forum to thank her fans for watching and believing in her. This humanizes celebrities on Twitter and engages them in conversations, which most celebrities have yet to do. Over time, engaging and participating in conversation with fans, may become more of a norm banishing the hierarchal way of viewing celebrities and their participation on social media tools.

Celebrities can and should begin to use Twitter as a way to give back and appreciate their fans, as opposed to just informing them. Only time will tell if the shift of PR 2.0 will influence celebrity tweeters to alter and strengthen their ways of communicating.