In the press this week comes a report that singer Mariah Carey has set up a website dedicated to her two 1-year-old children, Monroe and Moroccan.
Fans of the singer can see her son and daughter’s nursery at the mansion she shares with husband Nick Cannon, and even view the photo-shoot of their first family Christmas, by checking out ‘dembabies.com’.
The purpose of the website is to provide an additional string to the bow of fan contact, and while the primary intention is undoubtedly to celebrate her family, a secondary momentum will be to attract media coverage, and dovetail well with the other efforts of the Mariah Carey marketing machine.
Mariah’s new site is, of course, just the latest example of how numerous celebs are now using websites and social media for blogging and fan contact.
Gwyneth Paltrow’s ‘Goop’ website and blog offers a regular dose of lifestyle advice to her adoring fans, although with a strong New York focus, while many other glitterati and twitterati turn to social media, such as Twitter and Facebook, to address the nation and the world.
The two channels are very different, in both scope and feel. It is often said that Twitter offers direct contact with celebrities to a universal fan base, while Facebook has a more personal, intimate feel of a conversation taking place within a chosen circle of friends.
The record shows that the potential for making connections on Twitter in particular is massive.
Stephen Fry was arguably Britain’s first member of the ’Twitterati’ in October 2008, and he now has more than 4m followers worldwide.
Fans themselves have turned to Twitter as the vehicle for universal outpourings of emotion for celebs – the site carried 100,000 Tweets of mourning, for instance, in just the first hour after Michael Jackson’s death.
As the London Olympics approach, it is appropriate to note how Twitter can be the platform for national pride, centred on sporting events: a soccer match between Japan and Denmark in the World Cup generated an incredible 3,200 tweets a second.
The latest celebrity record-holder among the Twitterati is Lady GaGa, who now has over 20m followers – more than the population of Australia!
from butterCloudHQ
