Twitter is a Social Network Site (SNS) that serves to give people a way to text online and passing crucial information. It allows registered users who hold accounts in the website to share thoughts (tweets), read other people’s thoughts and respond with an option to agree (favorite) or share one’s agreement with followers (retweet). Its founders have worked hard towards shaping it as more of a social information tool rather than a social networking tool, thus lots of information is passed through the site.
Twitter is structured as a controlled public opinion site where any information posted has to be restricted to less than 140 characters, including punctuation. This way, all information communicated here is well thought out and structured to pass impactful information in the simplest form possible. It allows one to access information from followed users, share information with one’s followers and other general Twitter users. Personal, private communication is possible between users who follow each other through the direct message feature.
Twitter functions as one of the most important tools that people connect with others around the world. With the trending topic feature, Twitter is the most crucial site where public opinion is shaped and shared in the current technological global village. Business promotions, breaking news, and public relations statements are shared in the thousands daily, and Twitter users get the chance to respond. Celebrities’ popularity is also gauged by the number of followers one has, and the response generated by the tweets they post. The layout of the site allows users to post some personal information on the profile including personal photos, personal details, and interests to identify the users. The activities are grouped in tweets, media, and likes. For celebrities, verification helps to weed out phony accounts and give tweets from verified accounts authenticity.
Kevin Hart is a stand-up comedian located in Los Angeles. His verified Twitter account is @KevinHart4real with the username Kevin Hart. His bio reads that he can be summed up as a hard worker, with the opinion that everybody wants to be famous but nobody wants to do the work. Both his account picture and his banner is a poster of his Coming Soon movie What Now?, which will premiere on 14th October 2016. Additional information on the account is his birth date, which is listed as July 6th, 1979. He has a following of 30.8 million Twitter users, and he follows 544 twitter users. Also, in his profile information is a link for an application for emoticons by the comedian, going by the name KevmojiiOS.
The profile fails to identify him as an entertainer to a stranger, due to its lack of an identifying feature such as a photo. It also does not give any occupational details for the comedian, and with the serious sounding bio calling for hard work, the profile information fails to inform the reader of the profession and nature of the comedian.
Kevin Hart uses Twitter to drum up support for his events and products, chief among them his upcoming movie What Now? and other products such as his emoji application for iPhones. Most of the tweets appearing on his timeline belong to followers and fans, with him adding something to them or simply retweeting them to his followers. His primary purpose of communicating on Twitter is apparently so that he can promote his brand, with his tours, movies, and products featuring prominently.
He also uses the website to communicate with his followers by passing them information about his upcoming activities as an entertainer. Some of the more predominant themes include the use of photographs with information on them to beat the 140 character limitation. Also in prominent use is the tweet longer practice of using links to websites containing more detailed information about a subject hinted in a tweet. This allows readers to access more detailed information about subjects in discussion without the restrictive 140 characters rule.
Photographs with details of movies, events and promotions have been used extensively in Kevin Hart’s Tweeter timeline. Their design allows them to communicate in more details the specifics of an event, for example, the date and venue more effectively. Use of visual aesthetics only possible in photos allows a wider reach for the photos by making them more eye-catching than a normal tweet. The personal emoticons created by Kevin also follow the same theme of aesthetic appeal, whereby they are used over and over again in posts to attract people’s attention, to good effect.
With the use of tweets, retweets, and likes, Kevin Hart connects with fans by engaging in short conversations with the benefit of promoting whatever activity that happens to be upcoming for the comedian. He appears to have perfected the art of using Twitter to promote his shows by creating trending topics. This enables move his tweet viewership up and gives him retweets of up to one hundred and favorites of up to one thousand. Trending topics are established by using strings of hashtagged words that, when retweeted over and over, become more present in the site, picking popularity along the way and inviting more debate into the promoted activity.
Twitter’s character limitation of 140 appears to keep Kevin Hart mostly off posting his thoughts on the site, and instead having him mostly retweeting other people’s. This is evident by checking through the timeline to see that the majority of tweets are retweeted, with a few original tweets thrown in randomly, despite the account having an average of ten tweets a day, with most being during the prime time period of early night (7pm-10pm).
Kevin tends to keep his comedy in the media section. Here, he posts funny videos of himself, pictures and posts shared from other Social Networking Sites. His role in the media posts division stops being a promoter for his events and becomes that of the comedian sharing laughter with the world, as he says in one of his video posts. His personality is more prominent in this section that at the tweets timeline. As a brand ambassador to Nike, the media section contains numerous posts promoting the brand. With videos and photos posted announcing tour dates and calling for fans to attend and buy merchandise, the use of Twitter as a promotional tool again shines through here. The video limitation for videos posted on Twitter limits the videos shared to vines with durations of less than five minutes, majority being less than a minute long.
Kevin Hart’s presence on tweeter is impactful, and with over 30 million followers, he is one of the most popular celebrities on the site. With a total of more than 30 thousand tweets on his timeline, he is also a very active tweeter user. His media section contains about one thousand five hundred photos and videos, all of himself or his events. The personal use of this account is very limited; he does not appear to post any personal information on his timeline for the general public. Instead, Hart joins thousands of other tweeter users who use it as an avenue to promote their careers, rather than being a site of personal expression. Information passing also features prominently on the account, with information on upcoming events, shows and promoting brands represented to utilize his following. This is a rising trend whereby companies seek to utilize social networking sites as a tool for business promotion. This is brought about by the definitive 140 character limitation of tweeter that allows more organization and calls for more seriousness in networking activities.
