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Generation Y Twitter users connect to their favorite celebrities by following their tweets.

Lashing Out Against Kanye

Jaws dropped and boos ensued when Kanye West interrupted Taylor Swift during her acceptance speech at the Video Music Awards last month. From A-listers sitting in the audience to the millions of viewers watching at home, the venting began immediately, many channeling their anger via Twitter.

Katy Perry, who was nominated for the same award that Taylor won, instantly tweeted from her cell phone: “F- U KANYE. IT’S LIKE U STEPPED 0N A KITTEN.” Pop star Pink, another nominee, also condemned Kanye with a cell phone tweet. Within seconds, their words were received by millions of followers, many of whom were also online typing similar updates.

“Everyone tweeted about it,” says Austin Vanaria, a 20-year-old Tufts student who had received Perry’s update when writing his own, directing his flared temper into 140 characters. Twitter forges connections between celebrities and regular people, creating an intimacy and immediacy that makes these untouchables become touchable. This unprecedented connection is the reason that Gen Y is flocking to Twitter—to follow their favorite celebrities whether it’s Jimmy Fallon or Lindsay Lohan. “It makes you feel connected to celebrities and other people in real time, even if you’re not with them,” says Vanaria.

Tear Down this Cyber Wall

According to a Quantcast Corporation study, almost half of Twitter users today are Gen Yers between the ages of 18 and 34. “It’s the newest medium that introduces the feeling of getting closer, and creates this sense that direct communication [with celebrities] is possible,” says Lisa Gitelman, a media historian and communications professor at NYU Steinhardt. “By paring it down to 140 characters, you feel like you stripped away all the pretenses.”

In effect, the only boundary left between one Twitterer and another is a cyber-wall, which almost feels meaningless because Gen Y has an almost instinctual knowledge of the Internet.

When Twitter was launched three years ago, it took a full year for its popularity to rise. From last February to this March, it grew at a staggering < 1,382 percent. And six months ago, celebrities like Ashton Kutcher put Twitter on the map for the Gen Y demographic. On April 15, Kutcher challenged CNN Breaking News to see whose Twitter could first garner one million followers. Two days later, Kutcher reached one million just 29 minutes before CNN did, and their contest received international coverage. Today, there are over 8 million US Twitter users, according to Nielsen Online.

Claudia Yuen, a 19-year-old junior at NYU, first heard about Twitter through the Kutcher vs. CNN contest, and says she joined Twitter “for celebrities, because I still talk to all of my friends on Facebook.” And of the 79 people she follows, 46 are celebrities and reality TV stars, 16 are fashion figures, and another 5 are news organizations. “It’s like a guilty pleasure,” she says. “As much as I rely on paparazzi for my entertainment, I love reading updates straight from the celebrity.”

Conversely, Joey Bunge, a 20-year-old NYU student, joined Twitter so he could stay connected to his friends and family with “a quick snippet.” Yet he acknowledges that he couldn’t resist following many celebrities on Twitter. “Nicole Richie just had a baby, and I saw her baby’s pictures when I checked my Twitter from my phone to pass time… It makes you feel like you’re her pseudo-friend.”

Nick Douglas, technology blogger and author of Twitter Wit, Brilliance in 140 Characters or Less, believes this “pseudo friendship” is why Gen Y likes Twitter. “It makes our heroes more touchable,” he says. “But it doesn’t work like that for most older fans, who aren’t as used to reaching their heroes online.”

Enough is Enough

“Hero” may not be the right word to use to describe some celebrities. Recording artist Solange Knowles, Beyonce’s younger sister, documented her experience of overdosing on Nyquil at the airport with a series of tweets. They ended with this one: “Woaah… How’d I end up in the hospital?” All 300,000 of Knowles’ followers saw those updates, and tabloids snapped up the story, and it got national coverage. Such scandals make celebrities more human in the eye of gossip-hungry Gen Yers.

“I saw [Knowles’] tweets and asked my friends if they had read them, and we talked about it and related it to our own bad experiences with sleeping pills,” says Bunge.

Most stars, however, will keep their Twitter accounts PR-friendly, usually as a way to keep in touch with their fan base. Technology expert Douglas, who is a mini Twitter celebrity himself with 11,000 followers, explains, “The assumptions on Twitter make it very useful for one-to-many communication. Facebook works, but it requires more investment. Twitter is very simple, it only demands one thing at a time of its users, it’s very clear who’s reading what you write.”

The micro-blogging site is closing the gap between star and Gen Y fan, which raises the next question: How close is too close? In a move that disappointed more than 1 million fans, Miley Cyrus deleted her Twitter last week at the request of her boyfriend, in an attempt to keep her personal life private.

Some would-be stars can’t afford to be elusive. Douglas says, “George Clooney [doesn’t] suffer by not being on Twitter. But anyone who wants to be the next Jonas Brothers, or even the next Jason Schwartzman, would benefit from keeping fans posted regularly.”