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Hollywood's Twitter Economy
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A new PR industry has sprouted up: harnessing, and twisting, social media for celebrities' gain. Nicole LaPorte on Pee-wee's first tweet, Diablo Cody's online ethics, and Oprah's slacker ways.
I’m back! Follow Pee-wee! Someone who RT’s this gets a phone call from me tonight!
When Pee-wee Herman, aka Paul Reubens, re-entered the spotlight recently to announce a comeback—the 1980s kid’s TV icon has a theater show and a movie coming up—he made the de rigueur pit stop at The Jay Leno Show. Then, when he was finished taping, he bolted over, in full Pee-wee garb (gray plaid suit, red bow-tie), to the 140tc Twitter Conference to do something he’d never done before: tweet.
Within 24 hours, Pee-wee—whose reputation was tarnished when he was arrested in 1991 for indecent exposure—had more than 40,000 followers on Twitter and had become a Trending Topic—i.e. one of the most talked-about subjects on the social-media site du jour.
Whereas once, aspiring actors were trained in poise, dance, and singing, now stars looking to make a mark are taught the valuable art of communicating in 140 characters or less. ID PR—which masterminded the Pee-wee media campaign—offers a presentation known euphemistically as Twitter boot camp to its roster of A-list clients, including Ben Stiller and Natalie Portman.
Led by Natalie Lent, ID PR’s self-described “digital strategy gal,” the tutorial covers everything from the vagaries of Wikipedia to the most effective way to re-tweet.
As Web sites like Facebook, YouTube, and now Twitter have gained a foothold in Hollywood, a veritable cottage industry has sprung up around them, introducing new business models. A growing number of public-relations agencies now have individuals devoted to digital campaigns built around social-media Web sites, and entertainment law firms have attorneys devoted to trolling the Web for fake sites and stolen identities.
Not everyone is enamored of the practice of marrying social media with publicity. “Honestly, I think it’s a little disingenuous,” Juno screenwriter Diablo Cody told The Daily Beast. “As a Twitter fan, I think it violates the spirit of Twitter. Occasionally, I will actually get a request from people, saying, ‘When is your next project coming out?’ Then I’m happy to tweet something that’s a little whore-ish. But I think if you’re using Twitter strictly for self-promotion, it’s kind of lame.”
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Now every has-been and D-list star is going to tweet. Thank god I don't tweet and have no desire to.
LaPorte--you forgot the second PeeWee Herman arrest--for child porn.
Only in Hollywood could the White family rackets arrange a comeback for this kind of creep.
Are we bored with Polanski now? Or do you just have enough hate to go around, no matter how trifling the "offense."
Tweet. re-Tweet. Promosexual niTweets?
Possession of child pornography is relatively serious. Yet, he had a good defense that he was a collector of art and that stuff got mixed in when he purchased.
An enterprising Paparazzi needs to talk a star into letting him/her be his/her "tweettary" (tweet-secretary) and go around with the star providing constant updates to twitter... Soon all the big names will have a tweettary. Paparazzi do this anyway (follow the stars around), and it would probably pay better. Also add a few jobs to the economy.
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