Celebrities Who ‘Get’ Twitter, Celebrities Who Don’t
Earlier this week on his BBC radio show Chris Moyles (@chrisdjmoyles) waxed lyrically about Twitter, which he does fairly regularly, going on about how he totally gets it while other celebrity users of the service do not. He singled out Eddie Izzard (@eddieizzard) as an example. Izzard, he says, doesn’t get Twitter.
I found this interesting. Because Moyles doesn’t get Twitter, either. But Twitter gets him.
What do I mean? Chris Moyles has over 100,000 followers on the network, but he follows only twelve people himself, eight of which are fellow celebrities.
Meantime, Eddie Izzard, who has only been active on Twitter since March 15, has about 45,000 followers, but follows 25 people himself. Neither of them get it particularly well, but Izzard at least gets it better than Moyles. Twice as well, one could gauge, statistically.
This is, unfortunately, a pretty common theme. Why not have a name and shame? Here are a few more examples.
Brooke Burke (@brookeburke) elects to follow only three of her 230,000+ troops. Penn Jillette (@pennjillette), of Penn and Teller fame, matches that number.
Ellen Degeneres (@theellenshow) has a Twitter army of over 300,000 strong, but deemed it necessary to only appoint about 16 sergeants.
Geek favourite Wil Wheaton (@wilw), who has embraced Twitter (and the rest of the internet) since pretty much day one, still follows less than 100 people.
Even Ashton Kutcher (@aplusk), with his impressive near half-a-million throng of fans, only returns the favour to 57 of those. One of which, of course, is his wife (@mrskutcher). To her credit, she follows 58.
It goes on. Tony Hawk (@tonyhawk) follows 28. Kevin Smith (@thatkevinsmith) has a count of 15. Russell Brand (@rustyrockets) just 13.
Brent Spiner, who as Commander Data on Star Trek: The Next Generation is one of the most well-loved science fiction icons in the modern era, has just four follows. Four. Two of which are Wil Wheaton and Levar Burton (@levarburton), probably so they can reminisce about the good old days.
David Mitchell (@realdmitchell) follows nine people, but at least to his credit he claims not to get Twitter at all.
And then we get to Alan Carr.
Alan Carr, bless him, still has a follow count of zero. None. Nada. Zip. Zilch. Nobody, it seems, is good or interesting enough for Carr to follow, but almost 85,000 people follow him. I do. I like Alan Carr, but when it comes to ‘getting it’ he may be the greatest example of failure on the entire network. Or possibly the single-biggest ego. The network is like a mirror to Alan; all he sees in the stream is himself.
There’s an obvious pattern here. It’s not fair to say that all of these folk are treating their supposed ‘followers’ as fans, as one or two of them go out of their way to reply and chat with people. But, I say that’s not really enough.
During his radio show, somebody asked Chris Moyles why he didn’t follow more people and, rather tellingly, he complained that he couldn’t because then there was ‘too much information’.
Heavens, say it ain’t so. Too much information? How will your brain cope?
In A Study of Scarlett, Arthur Conan Doyle’s most famous creation, Sherlock Holmes, affords us this observation on the limitations of the human mind.
“I consider that a man’s brain originally is like a little empty attic, and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose. A fool takes in all the lumber of every sort that he comes across, so that the knowledge which might be useful to him gets crowded out, or at best is jumbled up with a lot of other things, so that he has a difficulty in laying his hands upon it.”
Doyle (through Holmes) argued that the brain is finite, and that one could risk losing important, even critical information, by absorbing all the little things that didn’t matter.
This is, of course, what Moyles is saying, albeit perhaps with less grace, and the cynical amongst us might suggest he needs to be more protective of what he has than most.
Holmes also said (in The Adventure of the Devil’s Foot), “To let the brain work without sufficient material is like racing an engine. It racks itself to pieces.”
This, I propose, is the right way to approach any kind of social networking, but certainly Twitter, with its no-risk approach to following people. You’re not sharing any private information. People don’t have access to photos of your children or you making a fool of yourself at the office party. Nobody suddenly knows the five movies you can watch again and again, and neither are they privy to how attractive you are compared to your friends or how badly you suck at Scrabble.
Twitter doesn’t give any of that. All that it asks is that you give yourself.
In the interests of balance, there are quite a few celebrities who do get what it’s all about. Who do like to engage with new and random people. Who do put a lot of themselves ‘out there’ and really stuck in.
Britney Spears (@britneyspears), who has more than half a million followers and is my tip to be the first person to break the million barrier, follows almost 80,000 people herself. Except it doesn’t really count, as she contributes to her Twitter stream even less than Guy Kawasaki (@guykawasaki). That’s right, it’s mostly her PR team.
Shaquille O’Neal (@therealshaq), however, is a different story. Shaq may only follow 493 people, which against his 385K seems slim pickings, but that’s roughly the size of the population of Canada compared to many other famous folk. O’Neal also truly does get it, going out of his way to engage with his followers. He even took charge of the recent farce over NBA players being scolded for tweeting at halftime during games, by announcing and then doing it himself. You gotta like that.
MC Hammer (@mchammer) returned the favour to about ten per cent of his followers, tipping his cap to over 25,000.
Jonathan Ross (@wossy) has the time for 2,746 of us.
Phillip Schofield considers almost fourteen hundred of you made of the right stuff. And regularly throws follows out there to people who meet his evil demands (i.e., donations to Red Nose Day).
And, of course, we have Stephen Fry (@stephenfry), who despite slipping out of the Twitter top ten of late, remains the daddy when it comes to getting it, following over fifty-five thousand people.
Okay, sure, it’s fair to say that most if not all of these folks still think of their followers as fans, but let’s face it: they’ve probably earned that perspective, if perhaps not the right. But at least they’re going the extra mile. At least they’re not treating us like fans.
One could argue that by simply being a famous person on Twitter you’re narrowing the gap between ‘you’ and ‘them’ by a greater degree than we’ve ever seen before in our history, principally because the network is, by definition at least if not always in practice, a two-way medium. This is something I would agree with. Never before have we had the opportunity to converse so easily with the good and the great.
But it’s not just a case of showing up, putting your name out there and saying ‘love me’. You get enough of that already. You’ve had that most of your adult life. We, the people, demand a little more.
Follow us. At least some of us. Not me, obviously, as I write articles like this. But there are, believe it or not, people out there who are worthy of your time. And if that additional demand on the finiteness of your cranium means forgetting about your lunch date at The Ivy then so be it.
After all, you can always re-book; it’s not quite so easy to win back respect.
This is a follow-up article to my February 22 post, ‘Celebrities Who Are Failing @ Twitter’.
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Great post, thank you. I always find celebs who only follow other celebs very strange. Are they afriad of the great unwashed masses?
@noelclarke is good at interacting with people, as well as keeping followers amused with his continued astonishment at the fact that babies fill nappies.
I take the point it’s rude not to follow anyone but if you follow say, 55,000 you can’t actually follow those people because you couldn’t read that many tweets and do anything else. I don’t follow all that many people, but I do read their tweets, and @message and DM people.
Katie
Personally, I don’t think that it’s a question of the more you follow, the more you get it. I’d say following around the 100-200 mark, regardless of how many followers you have, suggests that you’ve come across a few people that you want more information from. The rest you can get by responding to @messages.
Although I admire Stephen Fry’s investigation into carpel tunnel syndrome, following as he does 55,000 people, it must have made the service nigh-on impossible to use in any real way. If he *really* likes twitter the way I do, he’s probably got another, more manageable account he uses for people he actually wants to hear from.
Conveniently, I’d still suggest that Chris Moyles has missed the point, since 12 is far too low to suggest you’re using Twitter for anything other than vanity. This is convenient because I’d hate to admit Chris Moyles was right about anything. I certainly wouldn’t deride @wilw, who seems more than any of them to be using Twitter in an entirely sensible fashion, with his 100 followees…
This is all pretty meaningless.
Stephen Fry may notionally be “following” a few thousand people, but he never actually scans those people’s tweets about their own lives and responds to them. He only responds to people who bring themselves to his attention with an @ message. That’s all. The reciprocal following thing is nothing more than to gently massage the egos of the people who are desperate to be “followed” by him. It doesn’t change the way he uses the service. And he uses the service in the same way that many of the celebs you criticise do: i.e. Post stuff, and then react to the reactions. It’s just not as simple as a two-way street analogy.
In fact, I’d say that many of the “celebs” who stick to following a smaller number of people – say 300 or so – are actually using the service in a more meaningful way than Fry is. Take Graham Linehan, who probably “gets it” more than most – followed by 15,000 or so, following 300, i.e. the people he’s actually interested in. If he suddenly followed all 15,000, he’d miss reading the stuff from the people he actually wanted to read. And thus utterly devalue the Twitter experience for him.
Of course, apps like TweetDeck make it easier by enabling the creation of groups – so you could notionally follow 15,000 people, thus appearing magnificently connected and caring, but then only pay attention to the window with the 300 you actually want to read.
But most people don’t use Twitter that way. Yet.
I think eddieizzard is to quote old mr grace doing very well.
His twitters are interesting and informative and he engages very nicely with us tweeps. Even uploading piccies of him driving to meetings etc.
I think he’s one of the better ones and considering he’s a newbie to twitter, he is to be congratulated rather than pointed out as ‘not getting it’ – he gets it, he just gets it in his own way.
Which is a good way.
Not a fan, but a tweep.
a fair point, supported also by the fact that chris moyles will reply to some of the @replies of his followers. so there is a narcisstic element if you’re bothering to check who is @replying to your tweets, which i expect there will be ‘too much’ of if you’re a celeb, right?
Interesting that I should have considered unfollowing Alan Carr yet not Ashton Kutcher – both seem to be similarly ‘addicted’ and ego driven, yet Ashton’s interaction and diversity of comments saves him. I do agree you can’t follow thousands of people.
And – ahem – touchy topic right now. Population of Canada *slightly* larger than reported by you.
Interesting piece. Thank you.
I agree that followers vs following isn’t a foolproof formula to who ‘gets’ it and who doesn’t, but it is, more often than not, a pretty good indicator. With that number in mind, a quick glance at someone’s Twitter stream pretty quickly reveals whether they’re using Twitter as a mirror (as most celebs do), or if they’re using Twitter to actually interact with people. You know, even if they’re not famous too.
…I follow someone if I’m interested in what they say or do, why should I follow everyone who follows me? What a shit idea.
I agree that followers vs following isn’t a foolproof formula to who ‘gets’ it and who doesn’t, but it is, more often than not, a pretty good indicator.
Nah. Best indicator is whether they’re using @ replies. Nothing else. I’d say that anyone following more than 500 people is either filtering using something like TweetDeck, or is simply dipping in and out, or is seriously overwhelmed by DATA
@Joanne
Thanks. I’ll check out @noelclarke (aka Mickey from Doctor Who).
@Katie
You’re right that it’s very difficult to follow 55,000 people, and certainly to engage with all (if any) of them. But I’m not proposing that at all. I just want to see a bit of an effort from the names in Twitter’s top 100-200 users (and to be fair it’s not all celebrities, either). I think that following just a handful of people – certainly if they’re just other famous folk – is somewhat missing the point.
@Thom & @Rhodri
I agree with both of you. I’m not proposing for a second that all users, certainly celebrities, need to follow everybody who follows them. In that direction lies madness. Absolutely: be selective.
I just think that anything less than a hundred or so is not approaching the network with the desirable gusto and spirit. There’s an argument here for some kind of relativity or ratio between those that you follow and those that you are followed by. Of course, everybody can (and does) do what they want, but I’d like to see a more pleasing effort from those mentioned in my piece.
Certainly, it’s hard to argue that following nobody at all is a good thing. And claims that more than a dozen means you’re receptive to ‘too much information’ is a bit poor.
TweetDeck does make a big difference to the experience as well, as said. It’s very easy to manage several hundred users quite successfully using this excellent application. Even if you follow 50,000+ people yourself, TweetDeck’s group feature makes it very easy to port across the people you really whose tweets you particularly enjoy. (I’ve seen a growing number of celebrities doing this, notably @schofe).
I’m a huge fan and urge anybody not using the TweetDeck client to check it out. Makes a huge difference to how you engage with the network.
@banana_the_poet
I think Izzard is doing okay, too. I didn’t think it was fair for Chris Moyles to use him as an example of somebody who wasn’t ‘getting it’, was a large part of my point.
@fudgeit
There’s a lot of narcissism involved in signing up for a Twitter account if you’re very famous, I’m sure.
Certainly I imagine that some of the bigger names are over-whelmed with @replies from their legions of followers. But that’s a different issue, to me. I kind of expect you to miss @replies unless you’re really dedicated or it’s a very specific question. But then again, somebody like @Agent_M, who has 221,000+ followers, seems to respond to @replies all the time (certainly he does to me). Why can he do it, and another person cannot?
@Janice
My apologies for the dig at Canada.
Yes, Kutcher does interact very well, but I still think he could do with another 50-100 users in his follow list to fully dip into the experience.
@MsUnreliable
Absolutely; as I briefly said above it’s not just celebrities who operate in this way. Many other ‘power-users’ on Twitter do, too. (And many do not.) I just feel that you can’t go around saying you ‘get’ Twitter if you’re only following a dozen people.
@Samuel
Well, I never actually said that, did I?
As above, I don’t think following everybody is ever a great idea. Feel free to be selective and follow people who interest you. But at least follow somebody, and preferably quite a few of ‘em. 
Appreciate your thoughts guys.
Rhodri nailed it, I think.
The beauty of a system like Twitter is that it is so simple that it can be used in as many different ways as there are people using it.
Leaving the subject of celebrities aside for a second, alongside all of the other people I follow on Twitter, there are two or there people that I know “for reals” using it. No two of us use it the same way.
One has found himself blocking out all @replies that aren’t specifically related to him, because he’s found that otherwise, he ends up getting ludicrous amounts of half-conversations. He only responds to tweets where he has a specific point to add, too, rather than conversationally. For him, it just doesn’t make sense time-wise, otherwise.
Another manages to keep track of every tweet everyone he follows sends, all the time, but he only follows about half the people I do.
And I follow a hundred or so, and even at that level, I end up scanning through hundreds of tweets superficially when I’m away for a while… even then it’s a time-suck.
None of us is doing it wrong, or missing the point of Twitter, though on occasion one might argue that with the others! We’ve each found a use for the system that fits our personalities:
The first guy makes a lot of use of subject searches on Twitter: he’s methodical like that.
The second has a brain like a steel trap, and likes knowing all the way around his subject.
Me, I only started using it to collect my thoughts, and now I run my account in a way that complete defied my original aim, because my head’s all over the place by nature.
The lack of functions – and it’s a glorious thing, in the world of software and systems that keep clamping on extra features that don’t make sense – means that there aren’t really any rules, or any real need for established etiquette – the system really does look after itself and the users.
And though Twitter is a social network, in that it allows you to follow or search through other people’s tweets, it isn’t a Social Network in the model that we’ve come to recognise it, simply BECAUSE of that simplicity. The system doesn’t put any pressure on you to join clubs, or leave big spaces that you feel you HAVE to fill with friends or photos.
Personally, I think that what makes Twitter so attractive to these celebs, and everyone else, is that it can serve both uses: The personal, wherein you keep up with the people that you actually know or feel might enlighten you, and the pseudo-professional, where you get to interact with the public that want to engage with you if you want, but you don’t have to have them brow-beating you all the time.
And so far, I’ve had an exchange about foreign films with Jonathan Ross, talked Laurel And Hardy with Phil Jupitus, comedians with Bill Bailey, and so on, and so on. In none of those cases did those people try to exert any authority or pro knowledge, and it doesn’t MEAN anything really: They will either remember the exchange or they won’t, just like anyone else, and I wouldn’t expect them to follow me through all of the other trivial nonsense I post, alongside all of the other thousands of people who might want them to.
But at the same time, that I can have those occasional conversations – actual conversations, however brief, not just “can you sign this?” or “Oh god I love you on that thing you do on the telly!” – amounts to unprecedented access to these people.
At one level, Twitter works kind of like a massive party or convention, where we’re all guests, and the chaos that entails, and I think all of these discussions about what the follow-to-follower ration should be etc. is a little like insisting on getting a business card or phone number from everyone you talk to at such places: An uncomfortable attempt to map particular social ideas of reciprocation onto a situation that isn’t compatible with them.
I should add as well that to an unpublished individual like me, who for the most part only ever sees comments on my blog from people I could talk to in my day to day life, a published journalist like India Knight, whose Tweet I followed to here, or a moderately popular indie comic artist, can look like a celeb, so the term becomes a bit wobbly in Twitter.
Ah, bugger… sorry. That’s what happens when you get too into a reply: Everybody else gets in there before you.
My comment started being written at Rhodri’s response, for anyone interested.
Excellent piece, thank you!
I think you’ve made some points that a lot of people will have been thinking.
It’s weird though, if I am a fan of someone whose work I admire, I don’t give a second thought as to whether they ‘get’ Twitter or not – a case in point being Alan Carr – I have laughed out loud at his tweets so that’ll do for me.
Part of me thinks that there’s nothing to ‘get’ and that they can use it how they see fit – each to their own. You can use Twitter however you want and followers will still follow if they are a fan – regardless of whether someone famous ‘engages’ with them or not.
But generally, I am irked by people who, like you pointed out in your previous post, about reasons why you would unfollow someone, seem rather haughty – be they a ‘celebrity’ or not – they don’t reply and spend their time on Twitter either pontificating about social media, their own ‘expertise’ and posting links which are pretty stale or just plug their latest show/TV programme, book etc.
That can jar – but up to a point so many tweeters (me included) are using Twitter for self-promotion, so where do we draw the line in criticism of celebs for doing the same thing? As part of the entertainment industry they are bound to want to let people know what they are doing, aren’t they?
Sorry that’s a bit of a ramble – what I think I’m saying is that I agree with what you say, but question if it matters really.
Thanks again for a thought-provoking read.
@Rhodri
I think being active with replies is just one part of it. If all you do is wait for the masses to speak to you before conversing with them, it’s still disproportionately one-sided. It’s great those that actively do that, but it’s better if they’re also ‘listening’ to a couple of hundred voices, too. Would you not agree that anyone can do better than twelve?
@Nicolas
You make some good points. On Twitter being attractive because of simplicity, I agree in part. However, regarding functionality, Twitter.com is a very limiting way to interact with the network and it’s the reason why droves of people (I think now it’s a healthy majority) spend most of their time engaging with the network using external clients, all of which have far more features (certainly TweetDeck does, and http://dabr.co.uk is far better than Twitter.com if you have limited access.) Moreover, many of these applications (notably TweetDeck, as above) give you the opportunity to really get stuck in to Twitter. Because of this, it is my opinion that by the end of this year a more ‘2.0’ version of Twitter.com will be available (at least in beta mode). Naturally, we’ll expect the waves of Facebookesque protests immediately afterwards.
Your comment on the idea of ‘what is a celebrity?’ has certainly blurred on Twitter, and of course did so on MySpace and other social networks before it. My article was referring explicitly to those famous folk on Twitter who have massively disproportionate follow counts. We of course all have our expectations and ideals about what is the ‘right way’ to do anything, but I’d propose that if you are following only a few people you’re never really going to get the desired Twitter experience. It is about socialisation, after all. And I don’t think that observation is just limited to the rich and famous. Sure, be choosy, but follow, follow, follow.
(Your final comment has also reminded me I need to get an Ajax comment editor installed on here – thanks.)
@Linda
Thanks. I follow Alan Carr because he makes me laugh, too. As you say, it’s enough for me, and I don’t mean to really rag on the guy, but there aren’t many ‘zero’ followers left on the network (certainly amongst the famous). Even Tim Ferriss (@tferriss) realised his ‘zero follow’ policy which he clung on to for so long was going about things the wrong way.
Yes, as you say folk who don’t ever reply really get my goat. We’re all busy – well, me not quite so much as Trent Reznor, say – but certainly if I ask a question of somebody who is an authority in their field (not necessarily a celebrity; perhaps rarely so) I think it’s common courtesy to reply, even if it means an open reply pointing all to an FAQ.
I agree about the self-promotion thing and have made that point before. I don’t have a problem with marketing one’s self on Twitter at all (unless that’s ALL you do). I just like to see folk sharing a little extra, as well.
Thanks for the great comments.
Unless you mean this as a joke, or mixed up who actually follows whom, let me correct you on Brent Spiner only having four followers. He DOES follow only his two old TNG buddies and the two others. He IS followed by 109 103 fans as of this very minute and that within a few weeks only, and I’m one of them. Get your facts right.
@DeMoy
Thanks for spotting my typo. I think it was clear what I meant, certainly in light of where it fell in the piece, but I did indeed, in Brent’s case, misuse the word ‘followers’ instead of ‘follows’. That has now been rectified. Brent Spiner only follows four people, two of which are his colleagues from ST:TNG. Cheers for your comment and your whimsical demeanor.
Jesus. It’s a typo. People are such humourless cretins.
Thanks for calling me a cretin, Rhodri – you’re welcome! But just so to correct you too then, I neither insulted Sheamus’ ‘typo’, which by no means was ‘obvious as I wasn’t the only one who ‘misread’ it. nor did I warrant your own ‘whimsical’ remark insulting me for my innocent correction. Live long and prosper!
On a different note then, since there’s confusion over why the celebs only follow so few, that’s first of all their prerogative I’d say, and secondly, as in Wil Wheaton’s case explained by him as only wanting to follow ppl he knows personally. Not his plenty ‘geek’ ‘fans’, with whom he no less, just like Brent Spiner does, tweet every now and then. That’s what it is about – to ‘tweet’ with them, not ‘follow’ their own followers. Even if the follower might not get a retweet. It’s all just fun on a more interactive level.
Sheamus,
I resonate with this article. I think a lot of celebs come across very unapproachable. They just don’t know how to use the technology well.
I think you may be underestimating how difficult it must be to have hundreds of thousands of followers.
Think about this: after a celeb posts pretty much anything, there may be a dozen replies, sometimes even fifty or a hundred. Simply reading the replies would take a lot of time and consideration. Do they read all replies? Perhaps not, but they might! And if they do, that’s a lot of replies to read! If you had that many replies to read, would you even need to have a stream of followees’ posts?
We non-famous folk are lucky to have two or three replies to a comment, and so our experience *needs* to be supplemented by following more people if we want it to be most fulfilling. Celebs can have a very, very social experience even without following a lot of people! If they do end up following someone, it may just be a token of support, having little to do with whether they actually interact with that person.
If a celebrity’s @replies screen is where all the action is, what would be the benefit of *following* anyone? Oh that’s right: direct messages, for private discussion. Personally, I don’t think DMs are the point of twitter anyways, so if celebs are limiting the DMs they can receive, isn’t that a better indication of their willingness to be social?
Thus, I must conclude that judging a celebrity’s level of “getting it” can really only come from looking at their @replies. These are the best indication of whether they are listening as well as broadcasting, thus confirming that the interaction does, in fact, go in both directions.
I’m not underestimating it at all – I raised the point in both this article and the previous one that nobody, certainly me, expects any celebrity (or anyone else) to follow everybody; just more than, say, a dozen.
As I said above, just answering to replies is, in my opinion, not the best indication of whether they are getting Twitter or, indeed, really listening, simply because they’re not taking part in the stream. It’s still mostly one-way.
If a given celeb is following 12 people, eight of which are other celebrities, his or her stream is mostly themselves and a handful of carefully selected friends. Just because they then pick a few replies a day to respond too doesn’t mean they understand the concept of social networking. It suggests to me they are treating their followers as fans. It’s almost like a letter page; a lucky few will get a response.
I accept your point about receiving thousands of replies a day and have raised that before, and I wouldn’t for a second think that a celebrity or power-user on Twitter should respond to everything, certainly on a one-on-one basis. This is where open replies to all followers or even an updated FAQ is an excellent idea and possibly a necessity.
However, I do believe – and this is more to do with brands and non-celebrities who have a large follower base – that if you receive a genuine question about a subject of which you are considered an expert (and promote yourself as such) and completely ignore it, then I’m not entirely sure what you’re doing on Twitter at all.
I stand by my original point: Nobody who follows a dozen people on Twitter ‘gets it’. You don’t have to follow tens of thousands, certainly if you don’t think you can handle that level of a feed, but are you really saying out of the 14+ million users on Twitter there aren’t a couple of hundred worth a look?
Thanks for your comment.
i agree that there is no point in celebs tweeting unless they respond to their fans in some way!
BUT i think its unfair that you call alan carr a failure at twitter! he may not follow his fans but he does reply to them! i myself have had a reply and his twitter page is full of replies to his fans! so i actually think he is one of the few celebs who DOES get twitter, even if he doesnt follow people!