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Two new celebrity Tweeters get it right

The Duke of York and Manchester United are the two latest additions to the Twitter sphere.

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Source: AAP


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"Welcome to my Twitter account," wrote Prince Andrew, the Duke of York last week, making his debut on the social networking site.

A couple of days later, Manchester United football club joined in the tweeting too, with the message "New era, same spirit. The season starts here. Let's do this."

If you needed any confirmation that Twitter has truly become part of the media establishment, these new members provide it.

What's interesting though is seeing how celebrities and football teams actually use Twitter.

The Duke, like a lot of famous tweeters, has somebody doing most of the work for him. His feed (@TheDukeOfYork) is updated several times a day with news and photos. He's already got over 30,000 followers. It's a good way to stay in touch with a lot of people.

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Crucially though, and unlike many celebs, the Duke does occasionally chip in with tweets he's written and posted himself. They're marked with his "AY" initials at the end. This is great because it shows he's got the keys to the account. Maybe he fishes a phone out of his pocket to send a quick update, just like the rest of us.

Manchester United, meanwhile, uses its account (@ManUtd) like a traditional newswire. There's a lot of news to get out to a huge number of fans - it already has more than 397,000 followers - and it acts as the voice of the Club. That's quite a difficult job to do.

Every big organisation finds it hard to speak with one voice, especially when there are a lot of people in charge of different things.

United's feed is working well so far, because it's an informal but informative mix of news, fixtures, quotes, photos and gags. And that's exactly what Twitter is all about; not so much a corporate voice, but a comprehensive one.


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