Twitter Fakery
Ok so I am a "newby" on Twitter and I have only just got my head around what it is...but there is fuss and bother in Twitter world tonight!
And it's over Fakery. The big news story was the appearance of David Mitchell (he from Peep Show and The Mitchell and Webb Look, and various panel shows on Twitter posting long and plausable messages (sounding very much like the character he plays in Peep Show - Including the fantastic Markish quote "Excellent, in my new found web empire I've just made a complete tit of myself.")
All was fine in Twitter land today until early afternoon when it was alleged that he was not real and after several bits of detective work it was outed (by no-one other that Jonathon Ross - @Wossy) as a fake and then the "real" David Mitchell turns up...with a MUCH more realistic picture of himself eating Pizza.
What does this all mean though. Girlonetrack (the Girl With a One Track Mind) has commented that "Thinking that celebrities need to be a bit more pro-active in how they control their online/social media identities. Ignorance = no excuse" but it is a bit difficult in this case. Particularly in Twitter land where all you need to register is a name. And an email address. And that is it.
Is she suggesting that celebrities all go out and find all the social networking/blogging/micro-blogging sites and register themselves? This is clearly impossible for a start...and why should they HAVE to? Let's not forget that The Girl herself was "outed" after she had tried to keep her online persona secret.
So what should the celebs do then? Yeah they have to protect themselves a bit more, but just how they do it is not so easy to do.
Like life...it's a bit more difficult than that.
(As an interesting aside I have started to follow "maggiethatcher" today...another fake? Or the real Iron Lady??? I will follow and see...)
posted by Alex @ 7:02 PM
3 Comments
3 Comments:
I'm in two minds about the whole thing, to be honest. I love twitter, but in the main I think I like finding normal people. Not because they're mundane, but because they're not, and because the 140 character limit brings the creative and entertaining side out in some people. Some famous people are really good at this: Stephen Fry is brilliant, even when simply tweeting about what he's up to. Jonathan Ross is pretty good at this too. Both manage to convey their personalities in a reduced format; both like sharing photos and the like from their lives. Not to promote anything, just because.
So far so good. What I'm not sure about it the following this brings to twitter. I'm all for people using it, but very quickly, twitter is becoming about the famous people and how we relate to them (I got an @ reply from Wossy today, and I was quite pleased). The Daily Mail has written a piece about how dull and pointless the whole thing is, which just goes to show how mainstream it has become. Stephen Fry is a guest on Ross's comeback show on 23rd Jan, and I imagine they will be talking about twitter. Good. But also bad.
I looked at the site that "measures" your twitter power (or something) - @grader - and flicked down the Nottingham list to see if there was anyone worth following. It quickly dawned on me that most of the top50 consisted of people tweeting nothing but links to their own blogs. That's okay once in a while, but as your only use of twitter? Who follows that?
Twitter is brilliant, and runkeeper aside, is the application that I get the most from on my iPhone.... but I don't want to see it simply becoming a crappy marketing tool*
ST - loving your twitstream.
* although, as an aside, twitter has always... at least since I've been using it... been full of people following you in the hope you will blindly follow them back and they can try and promote something to you.
oh, and the Derby v Forest game is shaping up to be a cracker. Love to hear your view on the number 9 going to the sheep shaggers.
(and to declare my interest, although I've lived in Nottingham for more than a decade,, I'm a Wolves fan!)
ST
...but don't hold that against me
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