WHEN singer John Mayer (right), one of Twitter’s most high-profile users with 3.7 million followers, shut his account last Monday, he was just the latest celebrity to quit the micro-blogging site.
Some stars are finding that Twitter may be great as a promotional tool or for reaching out to fans, but it also comes with a downside.
Teen singer Miley Cyrus deleted her account a year ago, persuaded into silence by her new boyfriend, Liam Hemsworth, while Hairspray star Amanda Bynes deleted her Twitter account last week without any notice to her fans.
Earlier this month, Disney starlet Demi Lovato, 18, tweeted that she’s saying "goodbye to twitter" because "the access that the other people have is uncomfortable to me".
"The blessing of tweeting for celebrities was this idea that you could bypass sending out a press release and go directly to those who are following you," said Robert Thompson, professor of Television and Popular Culture at Syracuse University.
However, many celebrities have found that their tweets are being made fun of, or have them blown up in their faces.
Although Bynes, 24, offered no explanation for quitting Twitter, she seems to have had a volatile relationship with the so-called "Twitterverse".
The actress got flack for announcing on Twitter that she was retiring from acting earlier this year, and then subsequently "un-retiring" a month later.
"Many celebrities are realising the old saying that familiarity breeds contempt," Thompson told Reuters. "We used to think that celebrities were distant people we could never communicate with. Twitter reversed that and some celebrities are growing tired of that."
After Rimes and Cibrian divorced their spouses, the duo was photographed kissing each other, which sparked outrage. The singer began to get attacked on Twitter but when she tried to defend herself on the site, users retaliated even more.
Rimes closed her account in July, tweeting that it was "unhealthy for me and my family to have to read negative comments".
Paul Levinson, author of New New Media, says Twitter has now reached a sort of "shaking out point".
"Those who joined as part of a bandwagon because their peers were on the site, are now finding out if it’s truly a medium that works for them." – ReutersLife!
Updated: 11:29AM Wed, 22 Sep 2010
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