No More Official Twitter and Facebook Accounts for Season 9 Contestants

By On 03/03/2010 · 11 Comments · In AI Season 9, American Idol

Looks like Idol producers have decided to do away with with individual twitter and facebook accounts for the Season 9 contestants. That was an experiment that didn’t last long!

The American Idol 9 contestants have been tweeting like mad today, directing contestants to follow them at a generic twitter account, @ai9contestants:

Thanks so much for following me! All my updates from now on will be on our Official Ai9 Twitter Page, please follow me there @AI9Contestants

I’m sure TPTB noticed fans keeping tally of the number of twitter and facebook followers each contestant had. The numbers did give a rough gauge of who was picking up followers at the time.

Might as well consolidate. The producers must have the kids on a short leash, because the tweets were mostly pretty lame anyway…

Thanks for the tip, rickey.org

 
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  • Mark

    Hmm… so strange. It didn’t even feel like they were allowed to post anything, especially since some of the contestants who just got booted have been tweeting a lot more, and with more personal detail and all. Putting them on that tight of a leash really did kind of defeat the point for it to be anything but a gauge.

  • t2

    Heh…I guess it was too hard to monitor every last iota of contestant contact and squeeze the soul out of pleasantly review all the contestant contact in multiple accounts. Much easier to isolate any troublemakers make gentle suggestions if it all goes through one account.

    What happened to suggesting that the contestants do not look themselves up on the internet for psychological reasons? Heh…

  • Mark

    What happened to suggesting that the contestants do not look themselves up on the internet for psychological reasons? Heh…

    Well, the twitter seemed to be just automatic links from the Facebook, and that’s just directly posting to that site. So it’s not like they seemed to be reading anything from the outside world other than the “I love you!” comments directly on the Facebook page..,

  • http://mjsbigblog.com/luvadamlamberts-american-idol-tour-2009-washington-dc-re-cap.htm luvadamlambert

    That’s sad..but the tweets were pretty generic anyway

  • chessguy99

    Raise your hand if you think this was all a way to gauge contestant support so they could program the season better. Andrew becomes the run away leader on Twitter and suddenly he can do no right on the show.

  • Niall

    I never saw the point of starting Twitter or FB sites for them anyway, considering TPTB at AI are more restrictive and controlling than the Chinese or Iranian governments.

  • Mark

    Raise your hand if you think this was all a way to gauge contestant support so they could program the season better. Andrew becomes the run away leader on Twitter and suddenly he can do no right on the show.

    That’s what I first thought of. On the other hand… they have the vote totals, you know? If there’s a far and away frontrunner, they’re going to know it pretty quickly. And since they actually help set that up, it’s not like they were oblivious to it in the first place.

    It may honestly be that they wanted the Facebook pages for the contestants to have some online presence, but realized they’d have an open indicator and decided to streamline the presence to wash that out. Especially since they seem touchy about frontrunners being frontrunners this season. Or that the multiple pages were bothersome (but, considering the volume of posts, that seems unlikely). So it’s not that clear.

  • TwigLA

    Well good. I didn’t think it was such a good idea to begin with. Those kids have too much stress and work with the competition as it is. That was just an added responsibility on them.

  • ladymadonna

    Well good. I didn’t think it was such a good idea to begin with. Those kids have too much stress and work with the competition as it is. That was just an added responsibility on them.

    Yeah, I tend to think the “cons” far outweigh the “pros” in allowing the contestants build a fanbase via social media during the competition. But I have to think it would be especially hard on the contestants. Not just because of the demands on their time, but because Twitter could be an absolute mindfuck if you don’t come in with a very thick skin. Based on the nerves we’ve seen on display thus far, I can only imagine a season full of Brooke White-style meltdowns if the contestants are not only reading their own press online, but actually getting @replies directed personally to them. Twitter can be a nasty place.

  • druzilla

    I love how they all sent out the same sign off tweet like terrorist hostages which is pretty much how the tweets went as if they had a statement to put in their own words.

    The tweets even came at roughly the same time for each as if they shared one machine or it was one person going through tweeting for everyone.

    This was a very disappointing “experiment” and I have no interest in reading all contestants “comments.”

  • Margaux

    So you can’t count the Twitter followers, but you can count the comments on the Facebook posts, so what’s the difference?