Are Celebrity "Tweets" Real? It All Depends on the Meaning of "Real"

Mark Edward Soper — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 13:25:30 -0500

Our own Will Smith uses Twitter to announce new articles and content on Maximum PC, my wife and I use Twitter to keep track of our kids and their friends, and "Britney Spears" uses it to entertain and inform her fans. Why the quote marks? A weekend article in The New York Times reveals what Cnet says "we all sort of knew already" - Twitter is full of ghostwritten entries.

Some of the sports figures, celebrities, and politicians who use ghostwriters on Twitter and other Web 2.0 social network sites include Britney Spears (although her staff is now signing their own entries), 50 Cent, Candidate/President Barack Obama, Kanye West, Ron Paul, and others. However, the Times also gives credit where due to to celebrities who write their own tweets like Shaquille O'Neal and Lance Armstrong (who one-handed a recent tweet about breaking his collarbone).

How do you feel about ghosted entries on Twitter, Facebook, or other social networking sites? Would you be interested in being hired to ghostwrite? Hit Comment yourself (no ghostwritten entries, please) and tell us what you, yourself, really think.

Twitter logo courtesy of Techshout.com.

Stay Classy, San Diego; "Britney Spears," "WWE" Most Popular Search Terms

Paul Lilly — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 09:17:20 -0600

You can forget about the historic election (politics) or Bill Gates stepping into semi-retirement (tech), because according to Yahoo's search statistics, it's Britney Spears who ranked as the top search subject. The pop singer 'did it again,' topping Yahoo's search results for the fourth year in a row and her seventh time altogether. Other pop-culture celebrities making the top 10 list include Miley Cyrus at No. 4, Jessica Alba at No. 6, Lindsay Lohan at No. 8, and Angelina Jolie at No. 9.

But it wasn't just specific celebrities making the list. Wrestling apparently had a good year with WWE placing No. 2, one spot above President-elect Barack Obama. The rest of the top 10 included RuneScape at No. 5, Naruto at No. 7 ,and American Idol taking up the 10th spot.

Surprisingly, no other political figures were represented in Yahoo's most popular search terms, despite being a historic and hotly contested election year. However, when broken down into subjects, Sarah Palin led the way behind President-elect Barack Obama in people of politics search terms, followed by John McCain, Hillary Clinton, George Bush, Ron Paul, John Edwards, Mike Huckabee, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Mitt Romney.

On the subject of economic searches, surfers were most interested in IRS stimulus checks, followed with oil prices, gold prices, gas prices, Dow Jones, Sallie Mae, stock market, AIG, foreclosures, and debt consolidation.

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Are Celebrity "Tweets" Real? It All Depends on the Meaning of "Real"

Twitter logo courtesy of Techshout.com.

Stay Classy, San Diego; "Britney Spears," "WWE" Most Popular Search Terms