Halftime tweet

We've gotten pretty blase lately about all of the actors, athletes, politicians and comedians on Twitter. After all who wants to be the 24,315th follower of a person who only follows his 23 friends and doesn't respond. Of course, there are exceptions like Shaquille O'Neal who not only became a Twitter evangelist, but actually seems to enjoy tweeting with his fans.

Charlie Villanueva seems to have learned from the Big Diesel as well. Like Shaq, he can't seem to get enough of Twitter and loves to tweet with his fans. As an example, here he responds to Red Sox blogger and big UCONN fan Tim Daloisio after Syracuse beat UCONN in the epic 6 Overtime Big East playoff game.

Villanueva is so addicted to Twitter, that it recently got him into some hot water with this tweet.

At halftime of a game between Villanueva's Bucks and the World Champion Celtics, he couldn't wait to tweet. Unfortunately, Coach Scott Skiles was not amused. "We made a point to Charlie and the team that it's nothing we ever want to happen again," Skiles said after practice Tuesday."You know, [we] don't want to blow it out of proportion. But anything that gives the impression that we're not serious and focused at all times is not the correct way we want to go about our business."

As you can see, CV31 has had to face the heat.

Villanueva’s teammate Andrew Bogut has even gotten into the act.

Too bad, Alvin Gentry is the coach of the Suns, not the Bucks. He would probably be more tweet-amenable. Do you think it's cool that players are so "addicted" to Twitter that they are tweeting during games or is it just another distraction that shows that players are not as serious and dedicated as they should be. For me, I wish more athletes and other entertainers were like Villanueva and embraced Twitter as a two-way conversation with their fans.

Shaq is keepin it Real on Twitter

Image via Wikipedia

As Twitter has grown in popularity, celebrities have also jumped in. We’ve all gone crazy over Al Gore, Lance Armstrong, Dave Matthews, and Brea Grant and Greg Grunberg from Heroes. Earlier this month, everyone was excited that a Twitter account was opened to share the thoughts and blog updates from Britney Spears. However, as pointed out by Paul Glazowski in his Mashable column, Britney’s Twitter account was written by Lauren Krusk, Britney’s Social Media Director. Our celebrity obsession is so great that Eric Burke has even created a site to verify the authenticity of the celebrity.

However, not one of these celebrities has embraced Twitter in the manner that we all use it everyday. Not one of the people mentioned above follows more than 77 people (Brea Grant) except for Britney, but that is just a publicist oriented account. As you can see below, some update very sporadically. Now, one would assume that a reason why these people have joined Twitter is to engage with their fans, yet there isn’t a lot of engagement going on, is there?

Celebrity	Following	Followers	Updates
Al Gore	1	19,736	5
Lance Armstrong	2	6,159	188
Dave Matthews	3	9.032	1,128
Brea Grant	77	3,486	671
Greg Grunberg	10	3,076	413
Britney Spears	1,555	8.970	42

However, another big personality has joined Twitter and this one as befits his style is leading the way. You may have seen that Shaquille O’Neal has actively joined Twitter. In just 4 days, starting with his first tweet announcing his presence, O’Neal has followed 267 people, almost 10,000 followers and updated an average of 30 times/day which is equivalent to his scoring average in his prime.

Much has already been written about Shaq on Twitter, from the NY Times article to Adam Ostrow’s Mashable article about how a skeptic was proven wrong with an actual phone call from Shaq. Can you believe that, he actually called a fan! And as we have come to expect from The Diesel, he is showing us his inimitable style, his personality, his candor, and his realness. He is responding to his fans, consistently as shown below.

Shaq may say, “there can only be one me”, but as he said earlier today, “"most leaders r made. .wanna b sucessful, act like a leader”. Shaq is showing others how it’s done and he seems to be having a good time. Shaq is raising the bar for other celebrities to be real, be active, and actually engage with their fans. And it really shows the power of a passionate community like Twitter. Last week I wrote about how a league like the NFL can benefit by bringing its fans together with its players and now Shaq is leading the way!

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