Twitter Takes Over The World
Posted February 8th, 2009 | 3 Comments
Ok so it’s not quite at that stage yet but the increase in the usage and interest in Twitter over the past few months has been massive.
Tech Community
Twitter has been around for almost 3 years now, it’s was hugely popular with the web design community of which i’m part of and the tech community as a whole pretty much from the start.
The biggest names on Twitter until recently were tech icons such as Kevin Rose of Digg and journalist Leo Laporte. That all changed when the now President Barack Obama became the first high profile politician to begin tweeting. He quickly collected over 200,000 followers.
New Direction
Then in October of last year along came Stephen Fry to take Twitter in an entirely different direction. Stephen began tweeting about his work and travels and soon began competing with the tech heavyweights when it came to followers.
Mainstream
Another UK celebrity who can claim a major credit for the explosion of interest is chat show host Jonathan Ross who began tweeting in December last year whilst suspended from the BBC. Ross gained many followers himself and several of his more controversial tweets made it to the UK newspapers. But it was when he returned to work on ‘Friday Night With Jonathan Ross’ with Stephen Fry as a guest that the media and general public really started to take notice. This was because Fry & Ross not only mentioned Twitter but spent a few minutes actually talking about it, on a prime time TV show with an audience of over 4 million!
Since then the amount of celebrities signing up to Twitter and the amount of users signing up to follow them has increased dramatically. From presenters to actors to rock stars, huge names such as Demi Moore, Lance Armstrong, Chris Moyles and even the Dalai Lama! Along with hundreds of minor celebrities too.
CelebsWhoTwitter.com
This explosion of interest has prompted a new website from the makers of fluffypig.com, introducing CelebsWhoTwitter.com. Primarily a directory of the celebrities on Twitter but also used to warn people of the inevitable fake accounts. At the time of writing this post we have 93 celebs listed but they are being added all the time. We’ve uncovered well over 10 fakes.
You can search for celebs, browse categories such as Sport & TV and when you find a celeb you’re interested in there’s a link directly to their Twitter page for you to follow. You can even subscribe to receive details of new celeb additions either via RSS or email.
Check out the site at http://celebswhotwitter.com.
Follow us on Twitter at @fluffypig and @CelebsWhoTwiter (note only 1 ‘t’)
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Gareth Coxon - Dot Design
21.02.09
Great over view of Twitter Shaun. Twitter certainly has exploded in terms of people using it, some are using it in a different way to what it was intended, rather than telling everyone “I’ve just fed the cat and now I’m scratching my arse” I prefer to share links to sites that interest me and bits and pieces from the design and social media world, much in the way that you use it also Shaun, great blog by the way, I like the changes you have made.
Shaun
21.02.09
Thanks for the comments!
Although I have to admit i’ve slipped into the tell the world what i’m doing brigade :P
lol, it’s just damn addictive!
Oli from the-iBlog
02.03.09
Twitter’s certainly starting to hit the mainstream. Not sure if that’s good or not !
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