My Opinion on the Twitterverse – Celebrity vs News

I am only going to offer an opinion because I am lazy to dig up statistics for you. I have been meaning to write this but obviously I’ve put it off for awhile now and it didn’t help that I changed hosting companies. Yes, that’s just an excuse, I know.

Anyway, from what we have been hearing and seeing online, Twitter is the next big thing. Last year, it was Facebook. Twitter seems to be a good tool to spread news fast which is why media companies began to adopt it. When I say media companies, I mean news and broadcasting companies, those with a journalistic background.

But, like all things, we began to see the entertainment world embracing Twitter too to spread celebrity news and gossip. It felt like Twitter was inviting celebrities into the fold, asking them to set up accounts and tweet. It also felt like Twitter was in on the celebrity meltdowns and PR stunts and maybe could have requested to be part of it all.

If you remember, MySpace was built on this kind of hype too in the early days and even though we see MySpace dying a slow death it is still a medium used by celebrities and musicians to reach out to their fan base because Twitter and MySpace are two very different social networking sites. One is more comprehensive than the other and the other is just meant to blast out short, 140 character messages.

The thing with Twitter was that it started off on hype and it had to somehow secure itself as a force to be reckoned with. Whoever handles their PR and Marketing should be given a pat on the back because I think they’ve succeeded in making Twitter a very talked about brand in a very short amount of time this year with even news agencies fearing its prowess and its effectiveness.

I’m not sure if this was planned by Twitter themselves but the hype surrounding the battle between Ashton Kutcher and CNN a few months ago was suspect – it reeked of a publicity stunt and it didn’t help that coincidentally later that week, Oprah joined the Twitter family – with much fanfare, I might add. Soon after, we saw people by the truckloads embrace Twitter.

And the battle still continues today. It is almost like a test between what Twitter is – a tool for news and media agencies or an entertainment tool. In my opinion, I think it’s definitely for entertainment.

The trending topics or what people talked most about on Twitter proved this case – when Michael Jackson passed away, he single-handedly crippled the internet, a phenomenon that will be studied and discussed for sure. But what happened on Twitter was that Michael Jackson had taken the spotlight off the Iran Election, to the dismay of those who felt the #iranelection was more important than Michael Jackson. I beg to differ of course. Without Michael Jackson, music wouldn’t be what it is today.

I feel that Twitter is trying to achieve a balance of both but with the number of celebrities crawling on Twitter, it is hard to concentrate on the important world issues … I mean it is just cool to get real time messages from your favourite stars, don’t you think? I think it is.

What is Twitter to you?