Ghost Twitterers and Related Stuff

Since as long as I can remember, it's been common practice for celebrities to hire help, ghost writers, in penning their autobiographies. Therefore, it's hardly surprising that "ghost Twitterers" are now being employed.

In fact, in this age of broadband communications, celebrities hire help to create content for Facebook, MySpace and personal blogs in addition to Twitter. It's viewed as a marketing tool in keeping the celebrity's name before the public.

But there is one aspect of celebrity Twittering that I think is worth mentioning. By my analysis, if a celebrity is following tens or hundreds of thousands of people on Twitter in return for having tens or hundreds of thousands of people following the celebrity, chances are that nobody is actually reading the followers' Tweets.

On the other hand, if the celebrity follows only a few people (i.e. maybe a couple hundred) while tens of thousands of people are following the celebrity, there's a good chance that the followers' Tweets are actually being read by the celebrity or a designee.

My take is that Twitter is like a box of chocolates. Every time I open my page (I follow a few dozen people), it is an entirely new experience and I can't predict what will show up. There is so much real-time topical subject matter and the traffic is so rapid that I can only sample the activity. I try to check Twitter several times each day but, even so, I miss most of the Tweets. Once Tweets flow off the front page, I likely won't see them.

In my estimation, the real value of Twitter is its real-time content and the limit of 140 characters. Real-time information from an important event gives readers a heads-up on emerging stories. The limit on the number of characters forces people to be concise. Since it allows the reader to cover more material in a given amount of time, I like it. Brevity is the soul of Twitter.

I suspect that Twitter will mature in its applicability. In particular, I don't see any reason why Twitter couldn't function as an ersatz ticker-tape for important political and cultural events. I foresee something akin to eyes-of-the-reporter on the scene news feeds for designated happenings. Breaking news, up close and personal.

As an example, the upcoming G20 summit in London is expected to be accompanied with massive protest demonstrations by a variety of angry groups threatening violence. On the scene Twitterers could easily scoop all other media on important and not-so-important stories. It would be like live-blogging but with a much faster stream of information. And, of course, it's unvetted and it should be read with an critical eye.