[1]Whoever said that any publicity is good publicity, probably underestimated the futuristic publicity platforms — specially the new-age virtual medium like Twitter, where almost everyone can follow whoever they want to.
Even though it is the most sought after platform for celebrities, recently Bollywood actors Shah Rukh Khan and Aamir Khan decided to quit this space. Not just Indian celebs, even Hollywood stars are now bidding goodbye to this social forum. Is 140-character space too much to handle for our twitterati, who are now turning into twitter quitters? We find out.
Sumedha Dogra, a relationship manager at LetzChange, and a Bollywood buff says, “It can’t be a matter of privacy as most of them have their account handled by their PRs or communication specialist, and what they share is often shared with the intent to promote/publicise. It could be a new stunt to pull off the account to gain some publicity until they are back.”
Aazar Anis, advertising professional, feels most people are quitting Twitter because the interaction with the audience isn’t quite what they expected. He says, “Maybe most of the celebs are being hounded by their fans on every tweet like the paparazzi, and have no space for personal opinions without getting bombarded with complaints or odd requests.”
Just like most youngsters, maybe celebs too are facing the online fatigue and that’s the reason they want to cut off from the virtual world, feels Pratishtha Dobhal, an independent writer and communication specialist, who opines, “Everything has a shelf life and so does Twitter. Unless you re-invent and bring in changes which make one want to stick on. Anyway after a point the narcissistic nature of Twitter is bound to get to you.”
Nikhil Wason, a technology expert and co-founder of Cardback application, says, “Although Twitter is an awesome platform to express yourself and communicate with others, it tends to generate a lot of unwanted noise at times which can prove to be detrimental to the ego of the stars. And, then everything in this world has its best day and its worst day. Hence, a lot of celebrities have been going off Twitter recently.”
However, Nayatara Sen, 22-year-old student at LSR, thinks in real life celebs too need privacy but they have to be in news at the same time, so social media for them is mostly a publicity ground. “Twitter now is like a press release for popular stars. They prefer to just pass on information through these social sites and then go silent. I personally have stopped following them,” she says.
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[1] http://103.241.136.51/shahru1jpg-441