STEPHEN FRY

Article also published on Friday 19th June 2009 in The Guardian

A little under a year ago in this very newspaper I reviewed the Apple iPhone 3G and its new firmware release: ‘Now that the Applications store is up and running,” I wrote, “you will soon find it a very common sight indeed to see people crowded around each other’s iPhones showing off the latest impossible, breathtaking and ground-breaking application. ‘Ah, but mine can do this!’ will be heard in every café and bar. Satirical sketches will be written and performed on Channel 4 mocking the trend. Once again Apple has changed the rules and nothing will be ever be quite the same again.”

It is very rare for any prophetic utterance of mine to bear fruit, but in this case it seems I was bang on the money. On July 11^th 2008 the Apple

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Hello there.

You have either asked me to retweet a post or to draw the attention of my followers to a particular site. It is quite probable that you want to alert as many people as possible to a worthy cause, an extraordinary person or perhaps a landmark day or event that should be celebrated and recognised by as many people as can be reached. It is just as probable that I heartily approve of your cause and its aims. And yet I am sending you here to this page on my website instead of complying with your simple and reasonable request. What on earth am I playing at? How can I be so uncharitable, so unfeeling? With a quarter of a million followers isn’t it my duty to use my captive twitter audience for good and noble ends?

Well yes. But try and understand how difficult it is to comply with your wishes for a number of reasons.

If I direct followers’ attention to one site on request, then don’t I have to for all?

Suppose I miss a particular request, suppose I just don’t see it stream past me?

Suppose one such ‘charity’ is revealed to be rather more self-interested and less charitable than I had supposed, not unlike certain appeals

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QQQ

Questions, questions, questions. I have sent you here because you have been asking questions. No sin in that. We grow wise by asking questions. The right questions.

Twitter is defined by the tweet, a word used to describe the up to 140 character postings of its users. Tweets answer the famous questions that Kipling maintained should be answered by any piece of journalism (and micro-blogging of the Twitter kind is no exception): who, why, how, what and where? Tweets tell us who the tweeter is, why they are tweeting, how they are tweeting, what they are tweeting about and where they are tweeting from.

Take the following tweet sent by @squalid_but_goodhearted_student which you spotted on the Public Timeline.

I feel so stupid. My cat got more questions right on Millionaire than I did. Always feel dumb the night before an exam. Help, I’m drowning. Sent five minutes ago via Tweetdeck

We know why that was sent – @squalid_but_goodhearted_student feels stupid and nervous and wants to share the fact in a silly, faintly amusing, studenty cri de coeur.

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You have asked me to follow you. I am touched and will do my best to do so when I get round to it. But the chances are I have missed your request. A request that is rendered no more attractive by capital letters, pretty-pleases or frantic begging. It will be easier for me to have a big follow session if you include #followmestephen in the text of your post. Then I can search easily and do a big follow session when my fingers and metacarpals are fit.

#followmestephen is an example of a hashtag. For more on these have a look here.

Thanks and see you out there in twitterland.

x
Stephen

© Stephen Fry 2009

Producer note: A number of you have made comments about being blocked and expressed some disappointment. Please be assured that it is due to a technical bug and not because @stephenfry has deliberately blocked you. I’ll contact each of you that have made a comment on here asking you to send me your Twitter user profile name so you can be unblocked. If you don’t hear from me, please email help@samfrylimited.com Best wishes, Andrew Sampson, stephenfry.com producer.

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Nicole Stewart, the wonderful talent responsible for the graphic design of my website, has come up with some (IMHO) magnificent T-shirts which we hope will appeal. We are selling them through mysoti.com and if you have any issues regarding pricing, ordering and delivery you can be in touch with them direct via ask@mysoti.com or tweet @mysoti where Steve will be happy to help you out. Prices are determined automatically by location and currency. Plenty of t-shirts on the market are cheaper than ours, but plenty are more expensive too. We think, given the work behind the design, that the price we’ve settled on for our shirts is fair and reasonable. I trust you’ll agree. If not, don’t worry. The option not to buy is also available (while stocks last).

I Tweeted @stephenfry T-Shirt © Samfry Ltd 2009

This is certainly not about me profiting from my net presence. The volume

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