Literally, ooh, dozens, perhaps handfuls, of people may have gone into shock at the revelation that 50 Cent isn’t keeping it real and has a web person writing his Twitter updates for him.
It does raise an interesting issue though. Many celebs and others – brands, CEOs, etc – are rushing to get onto Twitter (largely, I suspect, because it’s the flavour of the month). It’s a fair bet that more than a few aren’t actually Tweeting themselves but employ somebody to do it.
Somehow, somewhere, one of the email addresses I use at work has got itself onto some kind of PR mailing list. How this happened I’m not exactly sure, but it’s the only explanation I can think of for the sudden influx of assorted press releases landing in the inbox each day.
Given that the address in question is a PR address, I doubt they’ll be getting coverage any time soon.
Interestingly, I’ve had a few colleagues and fellow PRs mention that they’ve been getting assorted press releases as well. There are clearly a few people out there in my chosen industry who haven’t done their homework.
The first twofootedtackle podcast went live today, and a lot of the week has been spent preparing for it. Now that we’ve got the first one out of the way, it should get easier (I’m already working, mentally, two weeks in advance on them).
On this week’s pod, my partner in crime Chris Nee and I, along with my old friend, colleague and sports journalist John Stanton, discuss… *deep breath*
The Carlos Tevez saga, Champions League, MLS, the Premier League title race, England internationals, AFC Wimbledon, Tooting and Mitcham, the fall of Charlton Athletic, and our favourite football blog posts.
The best kind of nights, I’ve always found, are the ones where you end up in a completely unexpected place. Last night, for me, that unexpected place was a fascinating in-depth discussion of Belgian politics and media, and contrasting it with the UK.
This isn’t normally what I spend my nights down the pub doing, but then it’s also a neat illustration of why I enjoy going to the assorted social media meetups. Or in this case, Tweetup.
Not around my waist, although I have recently gone up a trouser size.
So, in addition to this week’s Soccerlens column, which is mainly on Burton Albion’s title wobbles and includes references to Wilde and an impotence joke, there’s exciting news on the assorted football stuff I do.
As from next Tuesday (hopefully), my good friend Chris Nee and I will be producing the Two Footed Tackle podcast. Which is essentially chat about football, but hopefully an entertaining chat about football.
Some days you just have to love it when the following come together.
1. A wonderful non-story that all local journalists will have filed at some point or another that gets posted up on a local newspaper website.
2. A comments facility.
3. People with a sense of humour.
The result: 75 comments on a story on the Westmorland Gazette about a chair being set on fire.
This may, quite possibly, be one of the bestest things I’ve found on the internet this week 
Otherwise known as a quick, likely-to-be-ill-thought-out, ill-informed pondering on the state of the media industry.
Everywhere media-related seems to be making cutbacks. Even places that you would normally have put down as safe are tightening their belts. Friends, colleagues and people I don’t know but have heard of are all getting laid off, and many of these have surprised given, given their jobs.
It’s not just that we’re in a global recession. It’s also that this industry really doesn’t know where the hell it’s going. Journalism. Broadcasting. PR. None of them safe. Or with any real idea of where they meant to be going.
I miss doing film reviews somewhat, so I’ve plugged that void with a quick(ish) review of the wonderful LA Confidential Special Edition DVD over at Den of Geek.
And for those of you wondering what on earth I’ve written this week’s Soccerlens column on the answer consists of two words: Luton Town.
When I get the time, I actually quite enjoy writing. Whether you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoy writing it, mind, is somewhat more debatable.
MORE: And I’ve done a quick update on the very strange situation at Weymouth over a Soccerlens. I know, I know, two Soccerlens pieces in a week. I’m really spoiling you.
If, in the future, we’re all going to be sat at our desks blogging, Tweeting, Flickring and whatnot, for the rest of eternity, we’ll probably need e-numbers to get through it.
Whether or not that was one of the reasons behind Skittles taking their home page all social media-like, we’ll never know. But they are one of the more high profile brands to experiment with the various tools online. Whether it’s worked or not is another matter.
To recap: anybody logging into their Twitter last Monday would have probably found a slew of tweets with the hashtag #skittles. These were then fed into the Skittles home page which was updating all mentions of the sweet on Twitter.
Twitter has been featuring prominently in my life in the past few weeks, moreso than usual. I’ve been doing a series of presentations and training in the last month on social media and, unsurprisingly, the microblogging site has been a large part of that.
But one common theme that’s emerged as the assorted presentations have been put together is the danger of viewing Twitter as the be-all-end-all-complete-future-of-journalism-and-media.
Twitter is a great communication tool. There are some very cool tools being developed outside of the site, especially Twitterfall. And, because it’s the flavour of the month, absolutely everything appears to be revolving around it at the moment.