Tweets To Let? Celebrities Now Endorsing.

                Today we speculated upon the claim that celebrities may be getting paid by social networking companies like Facebook for posting up private pictures that can only be accessed through Facebook. Stemming off from this, I want to expand upon the economic and social aspects of celebrities being paid by the media to advertise certain products. I wondered if other sites like Twitter paid celebrities to tweet about certain issues or people because I’ve seen stars like John Mayer and Rick Ross hashtag random brands and companies. They in fact do.

                In an article I read by CBS, there is a whole internet market on celebrity tweets that endorse ads and companies upon request. Some are more expensive than others, based on popularity. In one example given in the article, a tweet from Khloe Kardashian costs about $8,000 as opposed to rapper Ray J, whose tweets are worth about $2,300. Either way, smaller companies can take this to their advantage because they don’t have to pay as much and have greater chances of building up a consumer base. Other benefits of this tactic include the fact that celebrity tweets cost less than putting up full length ads online and they are guaranteed to reach the selected celebrities’ entire fan base (the people that follow them). For example, CampusLIVE, a company that gears towards connecting college students, paid Lindsay Lohan to tweet about their website. Even though Lohan was going through a lot of legal troubles at the time, thousands of people clicked on to the website, and the company didn’t even have to ask Lohan to tweet about them again because they already tapped into her fan base. The simple fact that hash tags are quick and sufficient in redirecting to the source also contributes to the growth of this marketing technique.

I believe it's important for not only fans, but also for the general population to be aware of these "tweets". They aren't necessarily true- your idol may not even like those brand of sneakers or they might have not ever even used a certain website. It's all for profit and pinpointing consumers to buy a product or support a certain cause.

Article: http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-31749_162-57319886-10391698/celebrities-paid-thousands-for-endorsement-tweets/