

Are famous people super conservative when it comes to the latest Web 2.0 phenomenon? - amichail

Famous people for example are joining twitter pretty late in the game.<p>It almost seems as if they do not want to look foolish by taking part in a phenomenon that they do not understand well and/or that may ultimately fail.<p>Or maybe they just don't have the time to experiment with the latest ideas.<p>Now that Obama is world famous, it would be interesting to see if he becomes more conservative in his use of novel Web 2.0 services.
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jamesbritt
"Famous people for example are joining twitter pretty late in the game."

Are they doing so out of proportion to the not famous?

 _Lots_ of people are joining twitter pretty late in the game (though how one
knows this is _late_ is another matter).

Has Obama previously been less conservative in his use of "novel Web 2.0
services"? For example, prior to running for president, was he posting to
YouTube? Writing a blog? Keeping up a MySpace page? Hanging out on IRC?

Famous people's PR people may be the ones joining late in the game.

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amichail
Obama ran for president as an underdog and swung for the fences. Conservative
use of technology was not an option.

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jamesbritt
Right, but prior to his running, what were his technology usage patterns?

In other words, before we can say he is or isn't getting more conservative, we
need to know what he did before he was so famous.

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anigbrowl
Famous people's communications are most often handled by others, which is part
of what creates a perception of social value - you can't reach them directly.
If I was well-known enough to have millions of people projecting their
personal thoughts onto my image, I wouldn't be in any great hurry to take on a
high-maintenance communication channel either. Once you do, you're kinda stuck
with it.

1:40: trying to hide from my increasingly obsessive fans. LEAVE ME ALONE!

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amichail
But what about people well known only in their specialties such as academics?
It seems that they are also conservative in this regard.

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anigbrowl
If you already enjoy membership in a specific in-group (whether that's the
celebrity circuit, tenured faculty, holders of elected office or any other
fairly elite social network), then the chances are that other people need to
contact you than you needing to contact others. Nor do you necessarily need to
leverage technology for a competitive edge to the same degree if you're
already 'made it'.

Some people are just conservative; apparently Donald Knuth gave up using email
and spends his time writing 'the art of programming' and building pipe organs.
Other people are unaware or just not interested. Anyway, I'm sure lots of
famous people who are interested in the net make use of it, but choose not to
advertise the fact. There are social networks exclusively for the wealthy and
famous, such as asmallworld.net.

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wmf
Duh. Usually the latest Web 2.0 phenomenon is a waste of time. If you want to
be productive, let the early adopters weed that stuff out for you.

