Finally using her Twitter account for good, this week Britney Spears handed out tickets to her shows at Madison Square Garden in New York to a lucky fan via tweeted clues.
Is Spears playfully engaging with a new medium, or playing a dangerous game? Spears or her handlers left a series of clues for followers to parse about the place she was, like "Manhattan," and "below 60th Street and above 20th Street." The clues apparently led to the Times Square M&M store, just when you thought it was going to be something original and local-approved -- but anyway!
In the end, it wasn't Britney herself handing out the tickets—of course not, that's what you pay people for. Nonetheless the giveaway, and similar stunts pulled by @The_Real_Shaq and other celebs on Twitter sent the New York Times sniffing around the scene for an article pondering the fact that Twitter's biggest numbers are being posted not by text-friendly teens, but by adults.
Having jobs would keep most of New York from dashing off for the day to find Britney, but not all. It wouldn't be that hard for an ill-intentioned follower to locate and do harm to a celeb trying to "connect" with the "fans."
Ironically, most of the teens in the Times story raise questions of privacy which presumably we grown-ups on Twitter have learned to successfully navigate without the help of Internet Guardians. But as more celebs take to tweeting their trips (ex: Lily Allen), the potential exists for more than touristy heckling, clueless Twitpics, and hasty PR-driven apologies. More followers can mean more readers of your travel plans, and not all of them with innocent intents. Celebs beware; there's a time to take yourself off the map. by egw - Jaunted
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