I agree with the article’s writer. With the multiple faux celebrity pages on MySpace, Facebook and elsewhere, most normal people have come to expect a hired hand at the tweets and posts. And any reader who feels disappointed truly DOES need to seek some professional help. Those who feel their ire piqued by the discovery of a Ghost Writer should check their core motivation for seeking out the celebrity tweeter. Come back to reality folks, it’s just another tool for accomplishing a task.

Hello Mike,

That is a new and interesting take on the Twitter World!
It never even crossed my mind that Twitters would outsource that little bit of real estate.
But why not?
Does anyone really think it strange that some website content never sees any input from the site owner?
Absentee website onwers are the rule, and not the exeception.
So why not “hands off” Twitterers?

I look for interesting and quality Tweets, not love affairs on Twitter.

Thanks for giving me the opportunity to give my two cents.
Happy Holidays!

Yvonne

It was meant to be personal. Akin to speaking. That was its appeal.

If these “famous” people don’t have time to tweet for themselves then they can just remain silent.

Really I don’t see why people are making a big deal of this. As a freelance writer, I have spent the last few years writing a ton of web content for a variety of different people. Sometimes I get a byline but most of the time someone else gets the credit for my work.

If the quality of the tweets is not diminished by having an extra writer on board, why complain? Do you really think that every website you visit was written entirely by the owner of the domain name? Wake up folks. Ghost writing is big business and ghost tweeting is just one of its many faces.

We all retweet great information when we find it. What is the difference between someone like Guy Kawasaki retweeting your tweets or paying someone to research and write about something?

Great article. I enjoyed reading your thoughts.

This comes as a surprise to anyone? With thousands of social networking sites out there… it would take literally hours for people to update every possible web site. I am sure once in a while they try and get on and check things out in person – But for the most part… they have people who manage all these accounts. I have my assistant manage my pages and I’m not famous (or even that interesting)…still it would take about 3 Hours a day to update everything and with what I do – I just don’t have time to be there but I need the sites updated.

I don’t think it has anything to do with talent or the ability to write. I believe it has everything to do with the amount of time it takes in a given day to handle everything.

As much as I love correcting typos in my head to read a post, I would have to say that I follow very few ‘Celebrities’. There are very few worth following. Most have no real input into the world other than good acting skills and mediocre media philanthropy. Yes, there are celebs that do great things, I’m talking in general here. I follow interesting ACCOUNTS (regardless of who or what they claim to be). Most turn out to be real people that share common views of the world (not people, events or things). I agree that it is most likely due to time issues that most people hire tweeters. I can’t keep up with all of my own biz’s SEO let alone all my personal updates. I hire a company to run SEO for me and my biz including writing articles and reviews. However, my hired posts don’t appear to be a person. They don’t represent anything but the biz. They are CLEARLY advertisement. SN’s are blurring the content between personal and business. It’s important to know if you’re dealing with an account, a person or a robot. Some users can’t, that’s my concern. Is grandma gonna get suckered by a ‘nice person they tweeted with online’?

I have a slightly different take. Tweets, in and of themselves, are free. The only thing being affected by a “ghosttweeter” is some amorphous “relationship” between the tweeter and the tweetie. Whatever fantasy the tweetie buys into as a result of those freely attained words, that’s their responsibility. (We are assuming here, of course, just an exchange of words, not meetings in dark alleys being set up between adults and minors!)

OTOH…When you start talking ghost writers for books, i.e. where money is being exchanged in direct response to misinformation, then the lack of true acknowledgment of who did the writing is false advertising with a direct monetary value, and therefore, IMO, dead wrong. A “biography” is fundamentally different from an “authorized biography” which is fundamentally different in turn from an “autobiography.” And each has an increasingly high dollar sign associated with it. BECAUSE of that dollar sign, that boundary s/b clearly defined. Anything less is unethical. If it is ghost written, it is the words of the individual being interpreted by a third party. To claim that is an autobiography is quite simply false advertising and should be treated as such.

And when you start talking novels based loosely on a one line concept from a celebrity’s PR department…well, it’s simply not an ethical way to make money, IMO. And if it actually turns out a good book, there’s a struggling author somewhere who then never gets the following they deserve for actually knowing what they’re doing.

That subjective difference having been made, if tweets are used to promote the type of misinformation that deliberately leads to buying a similarly misrepresented product, then I’d have a problem with it.

I actually find this blithe acceptance of real ghost writing for monetary gain a bit disturbing, but that’s just my opinion.

Does this mean that Jennifer Anniston wasn’t communicating with me directly? Good grief.

We tweet therefore we are? Nonsense. If it is fair to assume that the writers of best selling authors employ the help of researchers and editors then the book itself takes on a collaborative feel to it. Guy talks about brand management and marketing all the time and has his hand in many projects. Unless the secret to his success is time-travel or hither-to-undiscovered realms of Star Trek technology, he needs help. He needs a team…of sorts. It is understandable that he employs people to tweet for him. What becomes a bit worrying is if he doesn’t okay these tweets before they are propagated through the web. He is doing what he always told us and something he is very good at …managing a brand, the Guy Kawasaki brand.

What is the difference between ghost tweeting and those cranked-out PR letters written by a celebrity’s publicist in years past? Many of these tweeting celebrities probably haven’t had an original thought in years (can you say Britney Spears, Paris Hilton and Jessica Simpson?) Even with tweets, they need an intellectual crutch. Why ruin their image by pretending to be coherent?

Ghost Tweeting is ruining Twitter. the term is TWITTER BOT and anybody using them 24/7 on multiple accounts just end up blocked on my account. If it is a bot, I can tell and nuke them. The term Ghost Tweets is used for those people too bust to tweet and hire someone ( A Real Person ) to tweet for them. Twitter Bot Posts are considered spam and get blocked. when enough people block them, Twitter nukes the accounts.
Kevin