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Ashton and the Interwebs

I have a dirty secret. I’m starting to like Ashton Kutcher.

For a celebrity, Ashton has some insightful viewpoints about the social web. To paraphrase some of his interview with Oprah:

My life is on display and not always by choice. …Instead of them [the media] publishing pictures I don’t like, I can publish pictures that have already been pre approved. …If there’s a fallacy about you, you’re able to respond to it in a genuine way directly with your fans.

Ashton gets it. He gets how to leverage the power of the crowd. He responds to the Average Joe. He shares funny and interesting links. He regularly lives streams. He updates his Facebook Fan Page often.

Basically, Ashton has removed that third party link and connects directly and efficiently with his fans. In some ways, he’s the @Zappos of celebrities.

But, by removing that third party (aka PR folks, the People and TMZ journalists of the world), what effect does it have?

  • – Does it piss off the networks that have the power to put him on their covers?
  • – Does it make their jobs easier?
  • – Will it make their jobs obsolete?
  • – Does it make celebs more “real” and remove them from their pedestals? Is that a good thing?
  • – Will interacting with celebrities like we do with weblebrities (aka Chris Brogan) become the status quo?

I left journalism a long time ago. Nevertheless, I wouldn’t have the answers to the above questions even if I was still in that world. Who knows? Maybe by the time celebrities really jump on board we’ll be onto the next thing. You know, like Identi.ca, Tumblr or Flutter.

Posted by Vegasbab on April 21st, 2009 Posted in News, Social Media

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