A few weeks ago, Twitter made an announcement that they were becoming involved in a proposed new reality TV series that centered around the micro-blogging platform.
The premise of the show was people using Twitter to track down celebrities. For anyone not familiar, there are many celebrities who use the site – and quite often I might add.
These include Rainn Wilson (The Office), Demi & Ashton (please don’t ask, “Demi & Ashton who?”), Kim Kardashian, John Mayer and the list goes on and on. Some have well over a million followers, so it’s fair to say they can have a huge influence. And they use their accounts to tweet often. Well, someone, possibly a publicist – may be tweeting on their behalf (even though I think that’s a big no-no).
Anyway, back to my point. Ashton & Demi were not on board with the reality TV concept. How can you blame them when you look at the proposed premise of the show? Celebrity stalkers via Twitter? Talk about biting the hand that feeds you.
Twitter backed off the reality TV concept – for now. But here’s another concept…the very population that helped to put Twitter on the map and bring it mainstream would/should/will be alienated should such a project come to fruition. So here’s a case of the tail wagging the dog
Does this give the celebrity population the right to dictate the business model that the Twitter “executives” envision for their company? I am torn between feeling that celebrities (who, incidentally have shrewdly embraced this technology as a free modality to aid in their self-promotion [not that there’s anything wrong with that]) are feeling that this is a one way street.
Just log on and check out one of these celebrities. Millions of followers but some not following many themselves. That is to say, they are very interested in talking at – but not really listening to – their fans. This does not go for all of them.
But I forgive Rainn for not following me back. He makes me laugh with every one of his tweets.
Oh, and follow MM on Twitter to hear from me at all hours of the day 🙂
Here’s a great clip from Larry King’s show. He interviews Kutcher and Sean Combs, who says here that you Tweet because you have something to say. Agreed.
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