Feel Free To Send This Around To Everyone

I tweeted this message from our account today:
"Twitter can be fun. Shaq is on here (@THE_REAL_SHAQ), and so is Neil Gaiman (@neilhimself). Celebrities tend to get personal with fans here"

I feel that this is a subject that should have definitely been brought up when we were introduced as a whole to Twitter. Lots of celebrities have personal twitter accounts which they use to chat with fans. Here's just some that I know of personally, and have even talked to a few of them which I never would have if it wasn't for Twitter. Actually, I don't know a single person on my twitter "friends list" personally, yet I still use it every day and have a great time talking to and joking around with some relatively famous people sometimes.

From TV:
Rainn Wilson from The Office (http://twitter.com/rainnwilson)
Stephen Colbert of The Colbert Report (http://twitter.com/StephenColbert) [He's not so active anymore, but you never know if he'll be back]
Will Wheaton of Star Trek infamy [And all around good geeky guy] (http://twitter.com/wilw)
Greg Grunberg from Heroes (http://twitter.com/greggrunberg)
Brea Grant from [also from] Heroes (http://twitter.com/breagrant)
Joel McHale, host of The Soup on E (http://twitter.com/joelmchale)
Ryan Seacrest, host of American Idol (http://twitter.com/ryanseacrest)
William Shatner (http://twitter.com/WilliamShatner)

Bands and Music:
The band Jimmy Eat World tweets all the time, sometimes even while they're preforming. They've asked via Twitter for feedback and even song requests mid concert (http://twitter.com/jimmyeatworld)
Coling Meloy, the lead of the band The Decemberists also tweets. Actually because of twitter, I just found out that they have a new album out (http://twitter.com/colinmeloy)
Coldplay (http://twitter.com/coldplay)

Plus plenty more that I probably just haven't found yet.

More and more people as well as celebrities are realizing the benefits of having an instantaneous way to reach "the masses." Like this past weekend when Shaquille O'Neal was bored so he sat outside in public and tweeted that the first person to come to him from Twitter would get a prize. Within minutes, he sent out another tweet to tell everybody that he had a winner and then he spent some time hanging out with the group of fans and followers that had come to find him.

Some schools use Twitter to relay messages (like the law schools listed here: http://socialmedialawstudent.com/twitter/how-law-schools-are-using-twitter/), as do some Police Precincts. It was also used back in 2007 to quickly spread information and warnings about the Californian wildfires (http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2007/10/firsthand-repor.html).

Now there is also TwitPic (http://twitpic.com/), a service used to send a quick link for an image to your Twitter timeline. You can take a picture, and within seconds everybody who's following you can actually see what you're doing. It might not seem like you'd have many uses for it, but there are plenty. And again, some celebs are very fond of using this service to send out behind the scenes pictures or sneak peeks.

I'm sure many people think there's no point to Twitter, and I know I've heard plenty of people say "What do I care what you're doing?" or "Who cares if you're going to the bathroom, why are you telling me?" And honestly, I agree with those people. Twitter prompts you with the question: "what are you doing right now?" but that definitely doesn't mean you have to answer that question for every little thing you do. You don't have to ever send a tweet yourself, or even talk to anyone on Twitter. Sometimes just following people can be entertaining enough. Some people link informative news posts, entertaining videos, and sometimes even behind the scenes information and pictures from TV shows and movies. Just a fair warning though: unlike on television, the Internet isn't usually censored. But in my experience, not many twittering celebrities have extremely dirty mouths.

So if you didn't think you would like it, give it another try. And this time you don't have to make it personal. You might think "Who cares what I'm doing?" and you know what, you're probably right (no offense of course), but theres plenty of interesting people out there, and you never know what you can learn in just 140 characters or less.