America’s Tweethearts

So I read the comments from @cheeky_geeky, Gawker and Felicia Day on the article. Then I read the actual article.

I can see their complaints, the article does treat both them and the medium for their celebrity (that being Twitter) in a pretty superficial manner. Gawker argues that this is what the ladies bring on themselves for leveraging their sex as a method for promotion on Twitter. I don't entirely see that as what is going on here, though I would agree that their status as "hawt girls who know tech" is a big part of their draw (especially considering the majority of their audience).

Dr. Drapeau makes a better argument: this is a light article for an audience that takes Twitter lightly, in part because they don't know how to use it.

Day notes that Vanity Fair treated major media celebrities with more respect in the same issue. While what I know of Day and the others leads me to respect them and believe that others should as well, they are not major media TV/Movie celebs, and I wouldn't have expected the same treatment from a MSM magazine (you know, the kind that prints). In the world that Vanity Fair deals with Day, and all of Twitter in general is still a minor player. Just see how Twitter is described: "the company itself, which is valued at $1 billion, despite little revenue and zero profit."

It sounds a bit ridiculous doesn't it? Twitter may be part of my life and the way I make a living, but the Vanity Fair article supplies something important, a prick to pop the bubble that some may be living in. Just because Twitter is important to us, just because CNN is now pulling folks Twitter pages, doesn't mean it's anything more than a minor website for people outside of our little self-referential circle.

Twitter is an amazing tool. The service and the folks in Grigoriadis's article were not given the full respect they should have rightfully earned. However, I'm amazed that anyone expected something different. Vanity Fair is a whole different world from the one that most "Tweeple" live and work in. The fact that Twitter and it's celebs got an article at all is a great step, lets move on to the next one.