Ever-thirsty followers

The war was called after a few days — it had quickly become all-consuming for Black. He now posts a few a day. Others keep a frantic pace to quench their ever-thirsty followers. Hammer, for example, says he has screens around him everywhere and even has a device that loops back the most recent 100 tweets from those he’s following.

One might wonder how anyone has the time, but Twitter does make it easy. You can text your tweets from your mobile phone.

“I’ve been amazed at the power of Twitter,” said Black. “From my point of view, from somebody who’s a whore for self-promotion, what it allows you to do is communicate very directly with people, but at the same time be able to keep them totally at arm’s length — which I think is the goal of any celebrity, and believe me I used ‘celebrity’ referring to myself very advisably.”

More are on their way. While popular micro-bloggers like John Cleese, Roots drummer Guestlove, actress Felicia Day and others make up the first wave of celebrity adopters, their ranks are swelling.

William Shatner, for one, recently joined. Unlike his fellow Trekkie, Burton, Shatner hasn’t begun conversing with fans, but is for the most part simply hyping his projects.

In an e-mail, he said: “I am a twit with Twitter, but hope to get up to speed within the next decade.” (AP)