Ever since Ashton Kutcher proved the massive PR potential of gaining a huge following on Twitter, celebrities have taken to the microblogging platform in a big way, sharing their every move with their followers, taking part in regular conversations with their fans and Twit-Picing everything in sight. From z-lists celebrities and comedians, to actors and models, they're all sharing their lives with us 140 characters at a time.
It's no surprise that certain celebrities take to Twitter so well - it gives them another platform on which to broadcast every moment of their interesting, glamorous lives to the masses. However, it also gives them an unrestrained and unfiltered access to the people that matter the most, their fans.
Although many social platforms are controlled by a team of publicists, it seems a large number of celebrities are taking their Twitter accounts into their own hands. This could be due to the lower barrier to entry – it’s easy for celebrities to integrate Twitter into their lives – or the fact that Twitter is much more intimate, yet reaches such a wide and diverse audience.
Last week Kanye West tweeted a number of times about how sorry he was that he upset Taylor Swift at last year’s VMAs. To emphasise how “genuine” he was, he also tweeted, "These tweets have no manager, no publicist , no grammar checking… this is raw". Regardless of which celebrities do have a team behind them checking their tweets or not, it’s clear that Twitter is changing the way celebrities interact with their fans and the public more than other social networks.
So it’s no surprise that people want to listen to what the celebrities themselves have to say – what could be better than starting a real life conversation with a real life celebrity?
But celebrities on their own are only human and unlike those that work in PR, haven’t been trained in the art of spin. They’re bound to f*** up sometimes.
Unsurprisingly, there have been numerous stories of celebrities bursting their carefully constructed PR bubbles, from Stephen Fry threatening to quit Twitter for being labelled ‘boring’ to Kim Kardashian allegedly being cruel to kittens.
And last week saw more celebrities making blunders:
Paris Hilton
Paris Hilton was recently arrested on drug charges after some dubious ‘substances’ were found in her purse. According to the media, she claimed that the purse wasn't hers but belonged to a friend. Fair enough. Until we scan back through her tweets to see that she bragged about buying the drug-riddled purse - for herself – back in July, and even TwitPic’d it. Oh dear Paris.
Kevin Pietersen
Last week Kevin Pietersen tweeted about being dropped from the England squad, as well as revealing that he’d been signed by Surrey. It seems he quickly realised the error of his ways and deleted the tweet but it was obviously too late, it had already been seen by fans and the media.
Demi Moore
On a less serious note, many celebrities have taken to Twitter to ‘overshare’ - particularly when it comes to photos of themselves. Demi Moore often posts photos of her and Ashton Kutcher on Twitter and sometimes links up her Daily Booth account, which features photos of her in a bikini among other things. Cheesy teen band JLS have also been sharing photos of themselves wearing very little in the past few days. Of course many fans loved the increased access, but others weren’t happy, branding the celebrities as self obsessed. A self-obsessed celebrity? Sick.
These kinds of mistakes are inevitable – without the help of a team of publicists, celebrities are just normal people and normal people make mistakes. These popular celebrities certainly don’t seem like they’ll be censoring themselves any time soon and I’m sure I’m not the only one who has a morbid fascination with who will be the next one to mess it all up.
All images via celebrities' mentioned accounts.