Social media seek celebs
Twitter, Facebook compete to attract stars such as Katy Perry,
SAN FRANCISCO Katy Perry, Justin Bieber and Lady Gaga are the most followed celebrities on Twitter Inc., yet the pop stars have even more “likes” on Facebook Inc. Now the world’s biggest social network is looking to capitalize.
As Twitter revels in its successful initial public offering, Facebook is pushing onto the microblog’s turf, preparing to roll out a tool that makes it easier for the rich and famous to chat with their followers, according to a person with knowledge of the matter, who asked not to be identified.
Letting actors, athletes and politicians communicate in 140 characters via public question-and-answer sessions has helped Twitter’s popularity. Now, Facebook is helping its billion-plus users interact with their heroes.
“This is an area of strategic importance to us,” said Justin Osofsky, vice-president of media partnerships and global operations at Menlo Park, California-based Facebook. “We’ve been building our partnerships team in Los Angeles and globally to better work with celebrities and media partners and simultaneously investing in products.”
Osofsky didn’t comment on specific products the company is developing. He said his expanding team has grown to more than 10 people.
This is fresh territory for the Web upstarts. Two years ago Facebook and San Francisco-based Twitter were venture-backed social-networking companies trying to prove there was big money to be made in online chats. Now they’re worth about a combined $140 billion and vying for leadership in the socialmedia advertising market, projected to surge to $11 billion in the U.S. in 2017 from $4.7 billion last year, according to researcher BIA/Kelsey.
Twitter jumped more than 70 per cent in its stock market debut on Nov. 7, after raising $2.09 billion in the biggest technology IPO since Facebook’s last year. Twitter is still a fraction the size of Facebook, with about one-fifth the market capitalization and number of users and onetwelfth the revenue.
Facebook is using that heft to lure celebrity attention, improving products to woo musicians, sports stars and other personalities, encouraging them to interact with fans, according to Osofsky.
“They are competing on core functions that each service needs,” said Josh Goldman, a general partner at Norwest Venture Partners in Palo Alto, California. “That is sort of creating a battle between these two companies.”
Cher, Martha Stewart and Julia Louis-Dreyfus have already held question-and-answer sessions using available features.
The offering is another way to attract stars who, like actor Channing Tatum, use Facebook’s Instagram service to post pictures of their kids. Or like basketball player Kobe Bryant, who posted a video on Instagram of his injury rehabilitation prior.
In addition, Facebook showed the first official clip of the movie The Hunger Games: Catching Fire earlier this month, and in August premièred the music video Holy Grail by Jay-Z featuring Justin Timberlake.
Twitter still gets plenty of celebrity attention. That includes the first photos of Kanye West and Kim Kardashian’s baby earlier this year. Last month, Kelly Clarkson used Twitter to show pictures from her wedding. And Bieber, who has 57.3 million “likes” on Facebook and 46.8 million Twitter followers, is a regular user of both sites.