Kanye West Redefines Publicity (And Himself) With Social Media

Visits to Twitter and Facebook help to shift public image of the performer

Kanye West has sure been on a promotional tear as of late. First he visited Facebook, then Twitter and then rounded out the office-visit hat trick with a trip to “Rolling Stone” headquarters. West also joined Twitter which has been burning our productivity ever since.

Pop culture icons and celebrities like West usually leave this work up to the publicists, who normally send out press releases when said person wants to be noticed for something again. We, in the media, then respond by writing an article, a blog post or what have you. But West is changing things.

These visits are personal. Recorded largely on phones and delivered on the internet, there is a vital, unrestrained amateurism in the message. Amateurism can be powerful when yoked to voyeurism—a lesson Vincent Moon exploited to great effect with his “Take Away Sessions,” and which Kanye has been employing masterfully.

Many celebrities are one-man (or woman) promotional machines, but rarely are they so candid and personal. West has made a name for himself in the past few years, not for his music but for his ego. There was the Taylor Swift incident, the South Park episode, and how could we forget the Bonnaroo nightmare? But here, by inserting himself at the source of his fandom, he breaks through those walls.

Some, like Diddy, have turned their Twitter feeds into promotional ventures. Diddy has aggressively shilled his partnerships with Ciroc and “Lopez Tonight” through the medium recently. Others use the service for a paid revenue stream. Kim Kardashian currently earns $10,000 per tweet by ad.ly, a commercial pay-to-tweet service, according to The Daily Beast. Other ad.ly users include Dr. Drew, Lauren Conrad, and Sam Ronson, who each earn four-figures per tweet.

But other famous faces (Neil Patrick Harris, Questlove, Kevin Smith) have chosen the opposite path, using Twitter to connect with fans and promote their materials in a more personal way. Kanye joked on twitter the other day that he was not being paid to tweet—yet.

But signing up for ad.ly or other pay-to-tweet sites would only ruin the earnestness with which he’s rebranded himself to fans over the last week. Some think of it as a simple marketing ploy, but looking at West’s tweets over the past week, one senses the larger aspiration to fundamentally redefine his connection to fans.

Disingenuousness only fosters resentment from fans. You may be talented, but that doesn’t mean we don’t think you’re a son-of-a-bitch. We want to see famous people at their rawest, at their most human, and Kanye has been nothing if not human over the last week—messing up how to to retweet and nearly falling off a conference table at Facebook  HQ.

If celebrities take note of West’s success in his pursuit, pop culture could get a lot more interesting.