Stephen Fry on Twitter: who next?

Last Friday was all of a flutter on popular micro blogging website Twitter when self-confessed technology dork Stephen Fry signed up and started tweeting.  It’s not all new for Stephen Fry. His blog and Dork Talk column in the Guardian are well worth reading and his podcasts are very popular.

Within hours he had 700 followers (he now has, at time of writing, 4960) and people within my social circle were firstly questioning whether it was the ‘real’ Stephen Fry, then exclaiming with delight when he started following them (I confess I too was chuffed that I was one of hundreds he also decided to ‘follow’).

He seems pretty keen though, having made 42 updates in about 4.5 days – certainly a lot more prolific than me. And you can see the effect it’s had on his profile on BlogPulse – blog entries about him spiked on Friday and yesterday.

I notice that fellow new media blogger Nick Burcher has spotted the trend for celebrities to start exploiting social networking tools to communicate to their fans/promote themselves.

Nick talks about the likes of John Cleese, Dave Gorman and Andy Murray using tools such as Facebook, Twitter and Seesmic.

This is a nice way to maintain a dialogue with fans and feels more personal than a corporate Fan Page / profile that shows no sign of ever having dialogue outside of the initial creation phase. I would love to see micro-blogging and lifestreaming become a trend that is embraced across the entertainment industry, giving real time information from sets, shoots and exotic locations. This could bring a new edge to traditional broadcasting and be particularly appealing for younger audiences – Simon Cowell Twittering during performances, Jeremy Clarkson on Jaiku…….. the possibilities are endless and should definitely be explored!

I’m not sure how I feel about this. On the one hand, it raises the profile of social media tools – and there could be some quite interesting developments – but on the other it devalues them by focusing on the celebrity aspect (we are, after all, a celebrity obsessed nation). Perhaps it’s the novelty value of being ‘close’ to a celebrity, but I wonder whether it would make the likes of Twitter more ‘Facebook’ and less ‘LinkedIn’.

Who next?

That all said, it does beg the question of which celebrity would you most (or least) like to see on Twitter?

My money’s on a Big Brother contestant using it post-house to elongate their rapidly flagging public interest. Or tweets from Fern Britton every time she resists a biscuit? Or perhaps updates from Russell Brand to keep us posted on his latest love conquest?

One thing’s for sure, it would take away the need for celebrity PR people as it would all become user generated, and that’s got to be a good thing.

Tagged as: nick burcher, social networking, stephen fry, twitter