The Twitter wave has spread from the early adopter tech crowd to Hollywood celebrities. In fact Ashton Kutcher and Britney Spears have more twitter followers than any of the tech cognoscenti. Celebs on Twitter give their fans an inside look at their lives and their inner thoughts. This morning Ashton Kutcher asked his 515,380 Twitter followers to send his wife, Demi Moore, a tweet “good morning I love U” creating a “love tsunami” for Demi. Over 4,000 tweets later Demi responded “I am feeling the love bomb and think I might explode! At least with a few tears of overwhelming joy. I love and miss you!” and “I am so stunned by this incredible outpouring of love that I can barely move.....”.
Marketing gurus are taking notice of the PR value of Twitter. Guy Kawasaki did a keynote speech at the SES conference yesterday on how he uses Twitter. Guy is a sensational marketer and one of the original Apple Evangelists. He says “Twitter is the most powerful marketing tool invented since TV,...and it's free. Bill Gates or LonelyGirl only get 140 characters. The true democratization of media.” Guy has some very clever ways of using Twitter, and tools to help spread his message. Some of them border on spam techniques, but as Guy said ”When I do it, it is clever marketing, when someone does it to me it is spam”. I will do a separate post on Kawasaki’s Twitter Tricks and Tips.
Celebs on Twitter – Ashton Kutcher is really into technology, especially Twitter and Qik. Last fall he launched Blah Girls at TechCrunch 50. Ashton does all his own tweets and often includes videos and pictures from his cell phone camera. Demi Moore is also into the tech scene and a big Twitter fan. The banter between Ashton and Demi on Twitter is like listening in on their personal cell phone conversations. Twitter allows celebs to communicate directly to their fans in a very personal and friendly way. MC Hammer, also made the move from entertainment to technology and is frequently seen at the big tech conferences. Hammer launched DanceJam, a web based dance community at TechCrunch 40 two years ago. Hammer was quick to catch on to the power of Twitter. He has a huge following and tweets every day.
Top celebrity Twitters, links to their accounts, and number of followers as of last week. Ashton Kutcher 521,469, Britney Spears 562,725, Jimmy Fallon 375,741, Shaquille O’Neil 349,674, Lance Armstrong 338,900, Demi Moore 284,453, MC Hammer 295,656, John Mayer 273,195.
The tech crowd is also well represented in the list of most popular Twitter users, but way behind the celebs. The number of followers changes daily, and they are aggressively recruiting new followers. As of last week the numbers were; Pete Cashmore Mashable 268,660, Mike Arrington TechCrunch 250,423, Guy Kawasaki 89,312, Robert Scoble 72,900, and Jason Calacanis 62,577
This week ExecTweets launched a list of Tech Execs who use Twitter. It includes execs from a wide range of tech companies. I was surprised to see my name included on the list. You can see the whole Exec Tweet list here, and follow my tweets at http://twitter.com/dondodge
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