Twitter for Dummies - Laura Fitton [42]
To get personal: Basketball star Shaquille O’Neal (@THE_REAL_SHAQ) and celebrity couple Ashton Kutcher (@aplusk) and Demi Moore (@mrskutcher) use Twitter to offer an intimate — and often irreverent — glimpse into their lives.
To share interests: Rapper MC Hammer (@MCHammer), who founded a Web video startup called DanceJam.com, uses his Twitter stream to help promote new artists, share his favorite music, and offer lively thoughts on the state of the industry.
To be real: Singers Miley Cyrus (@mileycyrus) and Sara Bareilles (@SaraBareilles) tweet just like the rest of us — gushing in excitement over successes, complaining over tired feet and other mundane life moments that make theirs seem a whole lot more “real.”
In many ways, Twitter functions as a sort of impromptu fan club for tech-savvy celebs both renowned and up-and-coming. In the weeks leading up to publication, Oprah Winfrey (@Oprah) and other world renowned household brands have started to sign up. Rumor has it that 1.5 million new people reached Twitter.com in the weekend after Ashton Kutcher appeared on her show and Oprah started to tweet.
Here are a few more Twitter accounts you may want to take a peek at:
Jimmy Fallon (http://twitter.com/jimmyfallon)
Tina Fey (http://twitter.com/TinaFey)
Rainn Wilson (http://twitter.com/rainnwilson)
50 Cent (http://twitter.com/50cent)
John Mayer (http://twitter.com/johncmayer)
Jimmy Eat World (http://twitter.com/jimmyeatworld)
Wil Wheaton (http://twitter.com/wilw)
Soleil Moon Frye (http://twitter.com/moonfrye)
John Cleese (http://twitter.com/JohnCleese)
People do start Twitter accounts using celebrities’ names, and they often get a whole slew of followers who have no idea that they’re not following the “real” celebrity — the person they think they’re following. Impersonating someone on Twitter violates Twitter’s Terms of Service, and Twitter has shut down accounts by impersonators. You can usually tell whether the person is legit by looking at the number of followers — if he has a large number of followers, the chances are good that he’s for real, but even that isn’t a guarantee. Of course, you may not care if the person is the real celebrity if you actually enjoy the person’s tweets!
Signing Up for Syndicated Material
Plenty of Twitter accounts syndicate material from all kinds of online non-Twitter outlets: event listings, blogs, newspapers’ Web sites, and so on. These accounts fall into a sort of gray area on Twitter: Most of them are quite welcome in the site’s community, and, in the case of news outlets such as The New York Times (@nytimes) and CNN (@cnnbrk), make up some of Twitter’s most-followed accounts.
Cable news outlet CNN has nailed it when it comes to using Twitter for more than just headline syndication, letting Twitter really enhance its broadcasts. Their newscasters not only use Twitter accounts to both interact with viewers and relay breaking news stories, but anchor Rick Sanchez (@CNNRickSanchez) fields questions from Twitter followers in real time on his on-air program, Rick Sanchez Direct. Interestingly, though, CNN’s most followed account, @CNNBrk, was developed by a fan, James Cox (@imajes) who later worked cooperatively with CNN and eventually sold it to them for an undisclosed amount.
Here are some news and media Twitter accounts you can check out:
BBC (http://twitter.com/bbc)
Harpers (http://twitter.com/harpers)
Marvel Entertainment (http://twitter.com/marvel)
The New Yorker (http://twitter.com/newyorkerdotcom)
NPR (http://twitter.com/nprnews)
Wired News (http://twitter.com/wired)
Tweeting in Unison
Sometimes, users or organizations create a Twitter account so that the community can feed it with updates. These community-created Twitter accounts can be automated (through the use of a script or bot) or moderated. But either way, these co-authored accounts gather the content from many Twitter users, sometimes