Did you know that Stephen Fry has started twittering? He’s already got 4402 followers. He set his profile up last Thursday. His twittering is prompted by what he calls “a new project” which involves him flying to and filming in Africa. That’s all he’s telling at the moment. So we’re all following his tweets with anticipation and delight without even knowing what it is he’s going to be tweeting about. So far, he’s flown to Nairobi, been a bit tired, and then tranquilised a rhino. But he still hasn’t explained what the project is.
What’s intriguing is that he’s clearly trying to keep up Twitter good manners by following all his followers. How thrilling is it to get an email in your inbox saying: “Stephen Fry is now following your updates on Twitter”? I can tell you – it’s pretty damn cool. (If that makes me sound like a bit of a groupie so be it.)
How on earth is he going to make sense of the random twitterings of thousands of people? Interesting . . .
I think it’s a piece of 2.0 brilliance that he’s doing this. It works because he:
- is humble in his approach
- is being interesting
- is being active and attempting to make the communication flow two-way – not just switching on the loud speaker
- understands the nature of the community he’s talking to
I suspect the other key element that will make this experiment work for him is that he’s trying to share an experience that he has a genuine emotional investment in. I’d be very surprised if it turns out that his trip to Africa is to film a new advert for, say, Starbucks. (But I’m willing to be proved wrong, of course . . . )
I wonder how many times PR / brand creatives have uttered the phrase: “It would be AWESOME if we could get Stephen Fry on board”?
Meanwhile, for a Fry-o-phile like me, it’s very heaven. Have I mentioned that’s he’s following me on Twitter?
Gregory Lyons on 
Jeremy Head on 
Digital Marketing on 
Ali Ahmadyar on 
Dinesh Thakur on 
Dave Oliver on 
Art Rogue Studio on 
Rob Pearson on 
October 14th, 2008 at 11:14 am
The best email I’ve ever had
October 14th, 2008 at 12:42 pm
Love the article and I love the idea of seeing Fry’s twitters! Excellent stuff
October 14th, 2008 at 12:58 pm
Okay, just got a notification!
Check this out
October 14th, 2008 at 4:08 pm
And how perfect that he’s demonstrated his genius by uploading lots of twitpics of himself to prove that it’s him!
October 14th, 2008 at 6:19 pm
Still none the wiser about what he’s actually doing out there though . . .
October 15th, 2008 at 10:03 am
Seem to remember he had a Facebook page and had to close it in the end because he was getting hundreds of friend requests every day!
October 15th, 2008 at 10:12 am
I think he must have updated his profile – he’s filming a documentary with the title “last chance to see” (wasn’t that one of Douglas Adams’ last projects?)
5,061 followers and counting.
October 16th, 2008 at 2:44 pm
He was here about an hour ago:
http://twitpic.com/ghiq
October 20th, 2008 at 3:05 pm
Almost 8000 followers now!
October 20th, 2008 at 4:10 pm
He’s doing a series about species going extinct…
October 26th, 2008 at 11:02 pm
Here’s the official site. It’s a series called ‘the last chance to see‘ a search for animals on the edge of extinction.