POLL: How Many Celebrities Do You Follow On Twitter (And Who Are They)?
This poll is simply for curiosity’s sake, and I want to share with you this hypothesis: the more time people spend on Twitter, the less celebrities they end up following.
It’s certainly true for me. Back in the day (maybe a heady six months ago) when I was young and naïve, I was probably following fifty celebrities on Twitter. Now I’m following precisely twelve: Robert Llewellyn, Dara O’Briain, David Mitchell, Derren Brown, Hugh Hefner, Graham Linehan, Gregg Wallace, Jimmy Carr, Jon Ronson, Peter Serafinowicz, Jonathan Ross and the obligatory Stephen Fry.
(Out of interest, three of the above follow me, too. I’ll leave you to guess who that might be.)
Why? Various reasons, but most of them revolve around the fact that Twitter is a fantastic leveller. It takes more than simply being famous. That might ensure you a lot of early interest, but to keep our attention you actually have to be interesting.
I’d like you to share how many celebrities you follow in the poll below, and also to write up a little bit about it in the comments.
Which famous folk are you following, and why? Who have you unfollowed? Are you following less celebrities now than you were a few months ago?
You may know the name of every celebrity you follow by heart, but if not, here’s how you do it:
- Go to FriendOrFollow.com.
- Type in your username, and wait a few moments.
- The first page you see will show you everybody who you are following that isn’t following you back. Check for any celebrities.
- Click on the ‘Fans’ and ‘Friends’ tabs, and check for signs of any celebrities in here.
- Tip: if you re-sort the pages by number of followers, that usually makes the celebrity accounts easier to spot, as they’re typically nearer the top.
(You can do this with anybody else you like, too. It’s quite fascinating to check out who famous folk are following, particularly when they’re not being followed back by that person.)
If that seems like too much work, feel free to simply make a guess. Try and be as accurate as you possibly can.
I’m talking proper, old-fashioned celebrities here. People who were famous before they came on to the internet. So, for example, Robert Scoble, famous as he is on Twitter and in the world of technology, doesn’t qualify. Conversely, Ashton Kutcher, Ellen Degeneres, Russell Brand, Pearl Jam, Ryan Seacrest, Britney Spears, Shaq, Oprah and Coldplay do.
That said, the concept of celebrity remains a fairly difficult one to pin down. Lots of folk are simply famous for being famous, and many household numbers in one country are complete unknowns in another. So, here’s the thing: if they’re famous to you, then they’re famous.
And please check with FriendorFollow before voting! The numbers of people who are putting the wrong number is unreal. Yes, comedians are celebrities. Yes, famous authors are celebrities. Yes, atheletes are celebrities. And yes, anybody who is famous in the ‘real world’ is a celebrity! It’s not just the Miley Cyrus and Jonas Brothers of this world.
(Also, if you follow just one celebrity, please, please, please write about who this is in the comments below.)
Who you follow can reveal quite a lot about you, I think.
Loading …And please remember not to lie. After all, we can easily check you out on FriendOrFollow, ourselves. 
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“That said, the concept of celebrity remains a fairly difficult one to pin down. Lots of folk are simply famous for being famous…”
When I said I wasn’t following any celebrities, it was purely on this level, as witness the fact that the rest of my tweet was something like “And they’re all nobody, anyway.” I’m certainly not suggesting that it is somehow illegitimate to use the word “celebrity” in the way that you have used it here, I’m just saying that my first instinct was to say “none”and that the reason for this is that I think of “celebrity” as a pretty hollow distinction.
For instance, I believe (and will passionately argue) that Paul Simon is probably the most important musician of the entire 20th century. But if someone said “Start naming celebrities” I’d run out of names long before I ever said “Paul Simon.” Why? Simply because I could count the number of times I’ve heard his name in the news when it was NOT in reference to his music on the fingers of one hand. He’s not a celebrity; he’s a famous musician.
Britney Spears, on the other hand, can’t sing, can’t dance, and couldn’t act her way out of a phone booth, but if she walks down a sidewalk, shaves her head, or pees in an alley, we’ll all hear about it for days. Celebrity.
That’s an unsupportable set of definitions, I suppose, but by those standards, I don’t follow any. By the standard of deserved fame, I’d have to guess 10-24. If they educate me or entertain me, I’ll forgive them for being famous.
.-= Levi Montgomery´s last blog ..Online Feedback: Part II =-.
Paul Simon is definitely a celebrity. He doesn’t appear week-in, week-out in Heat! magazine, and most people would pass by him without a look, but he’s absolutely famous enough to be considered a celebrity, certainly for the purposes of this poll.
Think of the use of ‘celebrity’ herein as essentially, ‘Are they famous?’ As long as you can answer ‘yes’ in the non-internet sense, we’re good.
And this is less about casting judgement on who we follow; simply I’m curious as to how many celebrities we all follow (on average), and whether we’re eating trimming that number down as our Twitter experience matures.
I follow ‘celebrities’ who are famous in the areas in which I’m interested. Lance Armstrong, for one, who hasn’t followed back although members of his LAF organization follow me. I follow a number of celebrity chefs (@bflay, @TylerFlorence, @PaulaDeen) and some of them follow me back (John Besh, Rick Bayless). I follow Karen Pryor, who is a seriously famous dog trainer I admire, and I follow a couple of NASA shuttle astronauts (who IMO should be celebrities!) What’s most important to me is that they send interesting informative tweets — although it’s very cool when a celeb I’m following responds and interacts. As for the Oprah, Ashton, Demi celebs – nope, I don’t follow them.
.-= Pat Steer (Gaelen)´s last blog ..Me & Kairol & the NY Times =-.
I was very surprised to see I was following 3 celebrities as I thought I had cleaned them all out a few months back. Richard Branson, Peter Greenburg and Ann Curry were the ones I still had. I plan to unfollow them. I do follow a few notables who are famous from social media and they are all following me as well. Another interesting topic!
.-= tomtravel2´s last blog ..News Tweets for Travel September 8-10, 2009 =-.
I actually mis-voted, thinking that there was no way I followed more than 10. Turns out that is true if I don’t count authors, in which case I follow 7 celebs. Counting authors, it’s 15.
I don’t think I’ve dropped any celebrities, but I’ve never really been one to follow them to begin with.
I think the first one I followed was Rob Thomas, of Matchbox 20. I started following him because he looked interesting and I enjoy his music (despite disagreeing with him politically). I remain following him because he seems to engage his followers. I don’t see the posts unless I go to his page, but he often ends a discussion with a “time to go to work guys, but thanks for the lively debate!”
I like that in a celebrity, one who talks *to* you (if you reply to him) rather than *at* you.
Others, I follow just because they entertain me.
.-= Dave Roy´s last blog ..Just getting started on Twitter? =-.
Lots of voted without checking or really thinking about it. From what I’ve seen so far, all those who voted ‘zero’ have several (some dozens), and virtually everybody else has a lot more than they think. One issue is the definition of ‘celebrity’, but I’m not talking about just the Britney Spears of this world. If the person is famous offline, then they’re famous. And that includes authors, athletes, fringe musicians and TV actors.
Interesting, it seems I follow quite a few “celebrities” but who cares! Mostly they don’t over-tweet which is what I want. Friendorfollow.com was worth a look and I’ve unfollowed 9 people. Left some with only a handful of followers as it can be difficult to pick them up. I don’t follow people with black background as I can’t read their bio. I don’t often get drawn into scrutinising followers/non-followers as it’s really not worth worrying about as long as you are happy with your twitter feed. Found one hypocrite who had #ff’d me saying we had opposing views but I was worth a follow, turn out she isn’t following me! Feel a touch sad about unfollowing as there must have been a reason I followed in the first place and now they are lost to the internet. Still, I’ll get over it!
Miley and Jonas who?
It is fun to see the latest tweet of the celebrities so that fans could be updated on what they are currently doing. But some celebrities just bid good-bye to Twitter, including Miley… I just hope more celebrities would get into this fad.
.-= rosette´s last blog ..sponkit_celeb: Taylor Lautner Will Appear In Jay Leno Show http://bit.ly/2JtZJl =-.
I’ve started to go back over some of the articles you’ve written and check out the stuff that I’ve missed.
I was shocked to find that I’m currently following 57 “celebs”. To be honest, there are a few times where I’ve felt I’m following certain individuals because I’m expecting them to say something interesting and not because I’ve seen something interesting.
There have been more than this previously, but I’ve take a few culls of my following list where I’ve got really hacked off with celebs. I’ll mention no names,
I counted only those people whom I follow not because they tweet that interestingly but because they are celebrities and I am interested in them personally in the first place
my list is short: Nick Jonas, Joe Jonas (he is dumb, I know, but he kind of amuses me), Adam Lambert, Svytoslav Vakarchuk (Ukraine, btw the first person who's been *verified* in the post-Soviet space so he's kinda real famous), Adam Lambert's band members Tommy and Longineu, Adam's brother Neil, Tom Felton (not a Harry Potter fan, just liked him in Harry Potter and his tweets are kind of interesting)