As spotted by Ciaran Norris, British tennis player Andy Murray is now using Twitter to provide regular updates to his fans and followers during the Olympic Games.
Described by many, including the normally very polite Tim Henman, as a “miserable git” this could be a very clever idea to help win over some new fans by helping to portray himself a more cheerful image of what happens behind the scenes, rather than the serious/grumpy Andy Murray we see on-court and in post-match interviews!
Many celebrities already have their own Facebook or Myspace profiles (most of which are fake) but the successful ones are those where people clearly take the time to provide information and communicate with their fans. Andy Murray obviously has a few people to convince but by cleaning up his online reputation I’m sure he can at least start to change a few opinions and help to get the crowd behind him even more in the future.
I first found this when Jemima posted about it on The Guardian’s PDA blog (http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/digitalcontent/2008/07/andy_murray_is_a_twitterer.html). At the time he only had 7 followers, so he’s gained quite a few since then but I do find it surprising that he doesn’t have more.
I’ve just tried to have a look at his official site (but it keeps crashing) to see if he’s promoting his Twitter account at all. It would be nice if he did as it’s adoption by people like him which could help to push Twitter nearer the mainstream, although what that would do to the fail whale problems, God only knows.
Just managed to get into the official site and the first thing you see? A push to Twitter – seems people just don’t want to know what he’s doing.
Thanks Ciaran, the update box and Andy says section doesn’t actually show this is from Twitter though so it’s not obvious that you can follow him without reading his update first. Would still have expected more followers from the Guardian push alone though.