Bye Bye Sarah!

Image via Wikipedia

Friday afternoon, Twitter was abuzz with a new celebrity Tweeter, Sarah Silverman. Many of us started following her and chatting with her even though we all saw the signals that signaled fanjacking: mispelled names, links to unofficial websites, and suspect dialogue. Still, we were having fun.

At the same time that Sarah joined the Twitterverse, Greg Grunberg of Heroes also joined. Encouraged by his co-star Brea Grant, Greg has gotten 1167 followers from his 17 tweets.

Of course, we all were skeptical about everyone's identity. However, based on Brea's twitter activity and her cool blog, most people were convinced that she and Greg were not fake. Sarah created more skeptics.







I've written about fanjacking before regarding Mad Men, but this is different and much more serious. Fans taking control of a fictional character like Don Draper or Chewbacca are one thing. However, taking someone's identity, whether a celebrity or not, is something else.

Katja Presnal dug deep and got to the bottom of things. By analyzing the tweets and checking out the links, she uncovered the scandal. Craig Murphy also chronologs the activities of Fake Sarah. Since Sarah's real identity was discovered, the accounts were deleted and now the twitterverse is safe from impersonators. Well, obviously not. Both Katja and Craig offer great advice on how to combat fanjacking/ impersonation on Twitter in their posts:

1. Go and get your name on Twitter RIGHT NOW, before someone takes it.
2. Be in control of your Twitter stream.
3. It’s always worth checking out the friends/followers of the person you are about to connect with.
4. Take a look at the people that person connects with, do they look like the kind of people who would connect with each other?

And as for, Brea and Greg, welcome to the Twitterverse! We hope you enjoy it as much as we do and find ways to really connect with your many fans out there. We're happy to have you.

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Betty Draper outed!!!

Like many of us, I got caught up in the Mad Men on Twitter craze a few months ago. Now it seems like any character who was ever in a frame has a Twitter character.  The overexposure of Mad Men on Twitter caused me to unsubscribe to all of them.  Well, it turns out there was a little controversy---The fanjackers were fanjacked. For example, who did you follow- @bettydraper or betty_draper? Although betty_draper had a head start, @bettydraper has come on strong:

• betty_draper has 4036 friends/3000 followers and has tweeted 1304 times
•  @bettydraper has 3987 friends/2866 followers and 819 tweets. She even has a LinkedIn Profile.

Now here's where it gets really interesting.   The writer of the fabulous advertising blog, Ad broad, has been tweeting as @bettydraper. So a cloaked character (Ad Broad) is spoofing another character on Twitter (Betty Draper) who is fanjacking the TV character.  You can read all about it on ad broad, but I need an aspirin!