Calvin Harris goes heavy on Social Media

Calvin Harris hit upon a potential You Tube smash yesterday when he created a 'Humanthesizer' to promote his new single, Ready for the Weekend. He followed up his Social Media smash with an expletive-laden rant on Twitter about a poor review from the Guardian's Alexis Petridis.

The 'Humanthesizer' used gratuitously sexy models and technology devised by what the tabloids would call 'boffins' to create a human synthesizer - a top idea.



There's also a 'Making of' video, which has been less popular but is worth a look.



However Calvin, or @calvinharris has gone a bit Lily Allen (rule 1 of 2009 reporting - mention Lily Allen in every context possible) and had a massive rant across a number of tweets this morning about Petridis' Guardian review, which he sees as unfair.



I salute his honesty, and this is the sort of thing guaranteed to be picked up by the papers, probably The Guardian itself, as symbolic of the self-indulgence of celebrities on Twitter.

However, this is the sort of episode, along with the numerous sportsmen faux-pas in the last couple of weeks, which I will go into further in another post, which will see the use of Twitter by celebrities on the wane. I firmly believe Twitter will revert to being used predominantly by those that found it geuninely useful in the first place, and that the mainstream media's constant search for the 'point' of Twitter will not be found in reporting what the likes of Calvin Harris and Bianca Gascoigne have to say on it. It may continue to be used by the likes of the News of the World as an 'overheard' gossip source (as was the case with Lily Allen fancying Andrew Flintoff - she has over a million followers - they all heard it!), but indulgence will only go on as far as it is useful or at the very least entertaining.

If, in the meantime, Harris manages to get more buzz around his single, fair enough, but he is actually creating more buzz around a bad review for his single, which is foolish at best. He seems to be a bit more contrite about it now, however:

Is Twitter the new MySpace?

When I logged into Twitter the other day I discovered I had a new follower in @georgiawonder. As is customary, I had a look to see what this was, and it's a 'UK band'. There has also been a spate of random businesses including Galvin at Windows, the swanky Park Lane restaurant, active on Twitter, as well as more 'viral' activity like @GMcQueen (better known as Peter Kay's Geraldine) and @Aleksandr_Orlov from the comparethemeerkat ads. This has got me thinking.



When MySpace kicked off, savvy bands and self-promoters were all over it, and you couldn't log in without having four or five new friend requests from complete randoms. Twitter can do the same thing, and I think is, but makes this much less intrusive and is nowhere near as high maintenance.

Whack yourself a picture and a background in, with a link to your site, and away you go. You are limited in how much you can post, which means you can't ramble, and it's pretty much centralised (you can use direct messages for privacy if you like).

The user-friendly nature of Twitter clearly makes it appeal to a different generation, and with a slightly different purpose. Lily Allen came from 'nothing' on MySpace, while prominent Twitterers like Stephen Fry and Jonathan Ross are clearly more established names who don't need to 'promote' themselves but WANT TO communicate with their audience.

In addition, the similarities don't stop there, as Twitter seems to be the new darling of the British media, who can't believe their luck in getting free updates from the lives of celebs, with Ross even threatening to Tweet with Fry when he appears on his returning show.



The issue for Twitter, of course, is how to start raking it in without losing the key attractions. If they can find how to, and possibly even if they don't, 2009 could be a massive year for Twitter.

Celebrities on Twitter - where's the real value?

I just sat down to compose this post, which I've been meditating on for a few days, particularly while in bed with a horrendous New Year bug, and found I'd partly been beaten to the punch by the Daily Mail.

There are two karmic aspects to this. The first is that I was alerted to the article by Nick Burcher's Twitter. The second is that the Daily Mail, as they appear to quite a lot, seem to have missed the point.

The offending Daily Mail article, which focusses on Jonathan Ross, Stephen Fry, John Cleese and Will Carling, decries the fact that the stars only post 'mundane' facts about their lives. They aren't the ones who need to get a life.



If the tweetings of the likes of Ross are so banal, how do they make for actual 'news' in the likes of the Mirror? What is mundane about the exotic travels of Stephen Fry and the opportunity to read nuggets of hilarity from under-exposed legends of comedy such as Fry and Cleese, who recently tweeted thus:

some people spout complete twaddle. they could be spouting incomplete twaddle and leaving the remaining twaddle for us. thoughtless!

There is no doubt that these chaps are using Twitter as a genuine means of expression and engagement on a public level to a select audience. Fry is accomodating in following those who follow him, while Ross, relatively new to the site, has only just worked out how to post direct replies (he's not the only one - it took me ages). Richard Branson is very active in promoting what he's up to, while Andy Murray posts news of his impossibly gruelling Miami training regime and the post-victory bets that resulted in the man who beat Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal in successive matches going to dinner with his clothes inside out.



I decided, through my lust for celebrity gossip (I'm only half joking), to have a hunt for other famous names one might expect to have got involved in Twitter. Sure enough, Lily Allen had a go at Twitter. She hasn't touched it for 18 months though. I reckon she might suddenly hit the trail when she starts promoting her new album in earnest though.

Russell Brand's on Twitter too, with a big statement of intent, but only the one tweet back in September. He probably got sidetracked by something.



At least Brand and Allen tried to do things in the right spirit. Twitter is littered with celebrities who have clearly been put on by publicists and who post little more than details of upcoming gigs and appearances. Bow your heads in shame Jimmy Carr and Frankie Boyle, as well as XFM, who appear to have put all their DJs on Twitter and then forgotten to crack the whip on the likes of Alex Zane and Dave Berry since synchronised early efforts back in March.

The real value on Twitter is in finding the gems that are the fake celebrities. I've been sorely tempted to create my own fake, but concerned about the legal implications. Marina Hyde's landmark victory over Elton John notwithstanding, it's still fairly dodgy ground. Particularly when you come to see some of the fairly racy stuff that goes on the fake celebrity Twitter profiles and that Kanye West made Twitter shut down a fake version of himself.

I'll be posting a series of fake celebrity Twitter profiles for your delectation with samples of some of their absolute genius, and how some of them have hopelessly undermined themselves.