Is Twitter Creating a new Level of Celebrity?

By: T.R. Slyder, TRSlyder@yahoo.com

People love ranking and categorizing level of celebrities. A-list, B-list, television star, movie star, leading man, a star but can't open a movie, reality-show star, oscar winner, etc.

It seems like the current caste system has an A-list, B-List, D-List and also "reality star" for the likes of Paris Hilton, Kim Kardashian and Clay Aiken.

I think there is a new caste level that ranks somewhere between "reality star" and "B-list" and it's "Twitter-List".

Whenever you hear about a celebrity Tweet it's never a major star like Jay-Z or Leonard DiCaprio or Michael Jordan. It's Ashton Kutcher, Perez Hilton, Paris Hilton, Lindsay Lohan, Jeremy Piven or John Mayer. Basically they are celebrities that want to increase their celebrity status from their sofa- making sure to keep their name out there without actually doing anything. I think there's a high correlation between celebrity tweet output and liklihood of calling the papparazzi to alert them of where they'll be in 20 minutes.

Wanting to stay famous or in the news is understandable, but using Twitter to do so strikes me as self-defeating.