Charlie Sheen, Twitter, and the Puppetmasters

Whether a sign of the power of social media or a sign of society as a whole, the infamous Charlie Sheen has set a Guinness World Record in getting to 1 million followers on Twitter in less than 26 hours, doing it with 140 character long #winning rants at a time.

It is quite interesting that it was not until 1st March that Charlie Sheen officially joined Twitter through the services of celebrity endorsement internet startup Ad.ly, which also brokered the deal with Twitter that secured his account getting verified literally in hours.

Now this all smells of opportunity and money; as Ad.ly basically matches advertisers with celebrities through social media, arranging for celebrities to endorse products through tweets (paid for) and facebook updates (also paid for). The amount of publicity they have received from this story is likely a gold mine for them.

As the saying goes; “there is no such thing as bad PR” it looks like an opportunity popped up to create some buzz and money on the back of Charlie Sheen’s now infamous attach on Chuck Lorre, the producer of the sitcom Two and a Half Men. Now there are very few celebrities that have had so much bad publicity as Charlie Sheen over the years, but who has still remained popular with the fans. There is also peoples fascination and curiosity with celebrities that are misbehaving to take into consideration in explaining the instant success of Charlie Sheen’s tweets.

Econsultancy has raised the point about whether Ad.ly and Twitter are taking advantage of Charlie Sheen and the situation to raise their own profile and make some money, and i’m sure that is the main reason, but is there really anything wrong with that? Charlie Sheen is an adult who knows, more or less, what he is doing and capable of making up his own mind about whether or not to share his thoughts with the world through Twitter. Did he get a nudget? probably. Was he forced? no.

Currently Charlie Sheen’s twitter account has passed 1.5 million followers.