Facebook is on to a good thing with its £11 charge for fans to contact their idols. But here's a way for celebrities to cash in too
One of Facebook's strangest revenue-building schemes of recent times is its new decision to charge civilians to send messages to celebrities. Messaging Tom Daley, for instance, will cost nearly £11. Miranda Hart, meanwhile, is 71p.
Facebook's aim, it selflessly claims, is to reduce the amount of spam in celebrities' mailboxes, but in tacitly purporting to provide a direct route to Jessie J's eyeballs, it disregards the reality of social media for even the remotely famous. A celebrity's experience of social media is completely different from our own, bombarded as they are with praise, fury, demands and inanity with each hour that passes. Also, many of the miniature missives pinged at notable names come from desperate fans who are so obsessed that £11 will seem like a small price to pay.
Even traditional fanmail has historically been hard to keep up with, and the volume of that medium is naturally subdued by the effort associated with pens, paper, stamps and postboxes. Yet still it comes, by the sackload. It's harrowing to witness the piles of letters, cards and gifts that pile up in the dressing room of any moderately successful chart act as they tour from city to city. This mail is frequently never even glimpsed by the intended recipient and is often swept, unopened, into a black binbag by a tour manager at the end of the night. In it all goes: poetry, lovingly sketched artwork, teddies and trinkets on which pocket money has been trustingly spent.
It's a predicament that hit Taylor Swift a month ago when a box containing hundreds of her unopened fan letters was found unceremoniously ditched in a Nashville dumpster. Now, before you become too angry, the act wasn't completely uncaring – the letters had at least been placed in the recycling section. But it's hard not to feel a twinge of heartbreak when faced with the spectacle of hundreds of trashed communiques which, as the Daily Mail noted, were "covered with pictures, hearts and sparkles". HEARTS AND SPARKLES. In the aftermath of bingate, a Swift spokesperson noted that Taylor received thousands of fan letters daily and that these were opened, read and recycled. If true, this is certainly an impressive commitment to fan relations: opening and reading 2,000 letters daily would be a full-time job for four people, and that's before a single reply is sent.
And what, one wonders, did those unopened envelopes contain? Well, probably more than some inconsequential chitchat about Taylor's lovely hair. Being an imaginary best friend means becoming a sounding board for thousands of teenagers. Many will confide in you, their only true friend, that they are unhappy at school, mistreated at home, or medically confused. During work experience at a teen magazine in the late 90s, when I was tasked with opening mail for the letters page, I opened one brief note from a girl who had recently lost her virginity and subsequently missed two periods. She was writing to her favourite magazine to ask whether it was possible that she might be pregnant. The date on the letter suggested that yes, she was probably at least three months pregnant by the time I saw it, and would be at least five months pregnant by the time any response appeared in her favourite monthly mag.
Instant access on Facebook might make it easier for Katie Price to respond to such messages before the only useful tip is which buggy to choose, but to any celebrity with a conscience, the day-to-day truth of fanmail can be frustrating and traumatic. They start with the best intentions, hoping to reply to everybody, to solve every problem. But faced with three postbags, it's just not possible. So how do you ignore someone asking for help?
Celebrities and musicians will often talk – off the record – about the turmoil they feel when faced with endless requests from charities, desperate fans, or parents with seriously ill kids. Responding to and fulfilling these requests would be an all-consuming job. And for time-rich celebrities of the reality TV world, this might actually be the answer. It takes 10 seconds to open a message seeking help or charity, assess its content and respond with either "thanks babes", "sorry babes" or "see a doctor babes", then hit send. So it would be possible to reply to 360 messages per hour. If we take £11 per message as an example, and if Facebook take a 30% cut similar to Apple's App Store commission, that could be £2,520 per day to a celebrity for just an hour's work. That's almost £1m annually. And if we can assume anything of the TOWIE brigade, it's that they would quite possibly view altruism a lot more favourably if it resulted in a huge pile of cash.
The only sticking point is that, so far, Facebook is offering precisely 0% of revenue to a message's recipient, leaving no incentive for a single message to be read. If you'd like to message Mark Zuckerberg to ask why, go right ahead. It will cost you $100. Reported by guardian.co.uk 9 hours ago.
One of Facebook's strangest revenue-building schemes of recent times is its new decision to charge civilians to send messages to celebrities. Messaging Tom Daley, for instance, will cost nearly £11. Miranda Hart, meanwhile, is 71p.
Facebook's aim, it selflessly claims, is to reduce the amount of spam in celebrities' mailboxes, but in tacitly purporting to provide a direct route to Jessie J's eyeballs, it disregards the reality of social media for even the remotely famous. A celebrity's experience of social media is completely different from our own, bombarded as they are with praise, fury, demands and inanity with each hour that passes. Also, many of the miniature missives pinged at notable names come from desperate fans who are so obsessed that £11 will seem like a small price to pay.
Even traditional fanmail has historically been hard to keep up with, and the volume of that medium is naturally subdued by the effort associated with pens, paper, stamps and postboxes. Yet still it comes, by the sackload. It's harrowing to witness the piles of letters, cards and gifts that pile up in the dressing room of any moderately successful chart act as they tour from city to city. This mail is frequently never even glimpsed by the intended recipient and is often swept, unopened, into a black binbag by a tour manager at the end of the night. In it all goes: poetry, lovingly sketched artwork, teddies and trinkets on which pocket money has been trustingly spent.
It's a predicament that hit Taylor Swift a month ago when a box containing hundreds of her unopened fan letters was found unceremoniously ditched in a Nashville dumpster. Now, before you become too angry, the act wasn't completely uncaring – the letters had at least been placed in the recycling section. But it's hard not to feel a twinge of heartbreak when faced with the spectacle of hundreds of trashed communiques which, as the Daily Mail noted, were "covered with pictures, hearts and sparkles". HEARTS AND SPARKLES. In the aftermath of bingate, a Swift spokesperson noted that Taylor received thousands of fan letters daily and that these were opened, read and recycled. If true, this is certainly an impressive commitment to fan relations: opening and reading 2,000 letters daily would be a full-time job for four people, and that's before a single reply is sent.
And what, one wonders, did those unopened envelopes contain? Well, probably more than some inconsequential chitchat about Taylor's lovely hair. Being an imaginary best friend means becoming a sounding board for thousands of teenagers. Many will confide in you, their only true friend, that they are unhappy at school, mistreated at home, or medically confused. During work experience at a teen magazine in the late 90s, when I was tasked with opening mail for the letters page, I opened one brief note from a girl who had recently lost her virginity and subsequently missed two periods. She was writing to her favourite magazine to ask whether it was possible that she might be pregnant. The date on the letter suggested that yes, she was probably at least three months pregnant by the time I saw it, and would be at least five months pregnant by the time any response appeared in her favourite monthly mag.
Instant access on Facebook might make it easier for Katie Price to respond to such messages before the only useful tip is which buggy to choose, but to any celebrity with a conscience, the day-to-day truth of fanmail can be frustrating and traumatic. They start with the best intentions, hoping to reply to everybody, to solve every problem. But faced with three postbags, it's just not possible. So how do you ignore someone asking for help?
Celebrities and musicians will often talk – off the record – about the turmoil they feel when faced with endless requests from charities, desperate fans, or parents with seriously ill kids. Responding to and fulfilling these requests would be an all-consuming job. And for time-rich celebrities of the reality TV world, this might actually be the answer. It takes 10 seconds to open a message seeking help or charity, assess its content and respond with either "thanks babes", "sorry babes" or "see a doctor babes", then hit send. So it would be possible to reply to 360 messages per hour. If we take £11 per message as an example, and if Facebook take a 30% cut similar to Apple's App Store commission, that could be £2,520 per day to a celebrity for just an hour's work. That's almost £1m annually. And if we can assume anything of the TOWIE brigade, it's that they would quite possibly view altruism a lot more favourably if it resulted in a huge pile of cash.
The only sticking point is that, so far, Facebook is offering precisely 0% of revenue to a message's recipient, leaving no incentive for a single message to be read. If you'd like to message Mark Zuckerberg to ask why, go right ahead. It will cost you $100. Reported by guardian.co.uk 9 hours ago.