Celebrities and Facebook

Talking about privacy on facebook in class this week got me thinking about those people in society who have perhaps the least privacy of all....celebrities. A while ago when I was a freshman in high school and had just joined myspace, I remember one of the big "fads" was to post your pictures on worldisround.com. This was right around the time when the tv show, laguna beach had come out. Obviously this show became a hit fast, and to myself and most other 15 year old girls (the target audience), the people on the show became instant celebrities. I remember being at my friends house one night, when she told me she had found one of the show's characters worldisround account pictures. This was a huge deal to us and to everyone else who we showed, because it was like a personal insight into these kids lives, which revealed things that the show did not. However, a soon as the show became a big time hit, the pictures and account were removed.
Similarly today, as soon as someone becomes famous, their facebook account is bombarded with requests, messages etc. etc. As fans people tend to view facebook or online accounts as personal, private insights into these celebrities lives. Most really big timer celebrities (think julia roberts or tom cruise) don't have any sort of social media spaces. They get enough attention as it is. However, people who are lower down on the popularity scale have taken advantage of facebook's Fan Pages. Facebook fan pages are another way for celebrities to interact and connect with fans, without it being a total invasion of privacy. They can update funny statuses and pictures and receive hundreds of comments. This is usually a one way street, as they typically don't respond to those who write on their wall, and you are not a personal friend of the celebrity but one of thousands of fans who "like" them. The amount of people who become your "fan" can be directly linked to how popular you are in the media at that moment. for example this link talks about how lady gaga surpassed president obama with facebook fans. A testement attributed mostly to the types of people who are on facebook and who actually like celebrity fan pages. As of this past summer, when Gaga was perhaps at her highest peak of celebredom, she managed to rack up 10 million facebook fans.
In regards to privacy, celebrities are not able to have the luxury of having private facebook pages, as we have seen firsthand through class discussions that that rarely works. Pictures posted of celebrities on facebook are just one more way for the media to obtain them and for the rest of the world to see, which has happened numerous times. However, fan pages have become a new way, along with twitter, blogs, websites and other social media forms, for fans to feel like they can have little taste of their favorite celebrities day to day lives.