Their tweets about the alleged disappearance of their grandmother, matriarch Katherine Jackson, were emotionally charged and prolific. One of Prince's posts thanking fans for their support ran far past 120 characters on TwitLonger. It's an unprecedented celebrity family squabble playing out in the digital town square.
This comes in the same week that Greek triple jumper Paraskevi Papachristou was banned from competing in the Olympics after she sent out a Tweet perceived to be racist. On Thursday, Florida State football coach Jimbo Fisher banned his players from using Twitter for the rest of the year after one of his players posted rap lyrics about killing police officers. And in the wake of Kristen Stewart's apology for her "momentary indiscretion" with married "Snow White and the Huntsman" director Rupert Sanders, "Twilight" fans have taken to Twitter to express their anger toward Stewart and their support for her longtime boyfriend and co-star, Robert Pattinson.
Twitter has ingratiated itself as a daily media fixture delivering cultural and news tidbits to an information-ravenous public, but it's increasingly finding itself in the spotlight as well. The quick-moving, instantaneous forum is often a double-edged sword for celebrities, who can bypass the tabloids and reach the masses with one uncensored click; but quick-fingered, loose-lipped tweets can do instant damage.
More frequently, celebrity Twitter feeds are being managed by wary flacks with an eye toward reining in their clients and avoiding potential missteps. The trend may be counterintuitive to the immediate, unfettered nature of Twitter, but some say it's a necessary evil.
"The great news about Twitter is celebs can talk instantaneously and directly to their fans; the bad news is, celebs can talk instantaneously and directly to their fans," says Howard Bragman, a longtime publicist and vice chairman of Reputation.com who's represented Chaz Bono and Stevie Wonder, among many others. "It's absolutely an increasing concern for us; every week we see something tweeted that's taken right down."
There's always been speculation as to whether celebrity tweets are really their own, or whether more PR-savvy handlers are tweeting for them toward some strategic promotional end. After all, 14-year-old Paris Jackson alone has more than 700,000 followers. Bragman estimates that about 80 percent of celebrities tweet for themselves these days, though as the medium becomes more of a central nerve for taste making, he says that number might be on the decline.
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