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I was quoted yesterday in a story in The Pioneer on Indian celebrities using Twitter. Earlier, I was quoted in a Mail Today story on celebrities using Twitter.

I think Twitter is ideal for celebrities because of a few reasons –

- It’s simple. You have 140 letters to say what you want to.
- It is essentially one-to-many. You don’t need to follow the fans who follow you. They will be delighted if you just reply to their @username messages.
- It is built to be used with mobile, via SMS, mobile web or a mobile app.
- It has an evolved app ecosystem, so you can directly upload photos to it via TwitPic etc., and find an app that is perfect for your device.
- It is hot, so if you are a celeb using Twitter, you are bound to attract lots of media attention.

Here is the full text of the story –

What are celebs doing now?
…. If you want to know it, log on to Twitter that is now fast catching the fancy of desi star, says ASRP Mukesh
Friday, July 24, 2009  Read More

(Even) I’m getting a little tired of reading newspaper articles and blog posts on how Twitter was the first source of news alert on the US Airways flight 1549 crash-landing in New York’s Hudson river (see Twitter, Twitpic, Wikipedia, Venture Beat, Silicon Alley Insider, BBC dot.life Blog, The Guardian, WSJ Digits, WebProNews, CNet).

Let’s get used to it. From this moment onwards, every accident worth reporting, anywhere in the world, will be reported first, via SMS, by a bystander who has a mobile phone. In most cases, the first photos or videos of the accident will be taken by a bystander who has a camera phone. If the accident occurs in a developed country, or a metro city in a developing country, the SMS will be sent to a microblogging service like Twitter and the photos and videos will be uploaded to photo- and video-sharing websites like Flickr and YouTube. From this moment onwards, we will do well to expect it to happen, and reserve our surprise for the cases when it doesn’t happen.

In fact, going forward, we can expect to see the following news lifecycle for almost all unplanned breaking news stories (adapted from the “news diamond” by Paul Bradshaw via Valeria Maltoni) –  Read More