How Twitter Is Creating A Social World For Nigerian Celebrities

Global Village is a term closely associated with Marshall McLuhan, popularized in his books The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man (1962) and Understanding Media (1964). McLuhan described how the globe has been contracted into a village by electric technology and the instantaneous movement of information from every quarter to every point at the same time.

Marshall McLuhan predicted the Internet as an "extension of consciousness" in The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man thirty years before its commercialization.

According to him, the enhanced "electric speed in bringing all social and political functions together in a sudden implosion has heightened human awareness of responsibility to an intense degree." Increased speed of communication and the ability of people to read about, spread, and react to global news quickly, forces us to become more involved with one another from various social groups and countries around the world and to be more aware of our global responsibilities.

Wizkid

While the emergence of internet still make some people to doubt the reality of McLuhan postulation. The evolution of social media soon convience many that the Communication Guru was right. Social media has become the standard for personal and professional networking. It provides an effective and inexpensive method of connecting people with other people, products, causes, ideas, and information.

In Africa, Twitter, like Facebook remain a rapidly growing trend especially among the youth and online savvy adults.


In 2012, Nigeria was rated third Twitter nation in Africa. Africa's biggest economy, South Africa, generated the most tweets with over 5m, more than double second placed Kenya's 2.48m. Then came Nigeria (1.67m), Egypt (1.21m) and Morocco (0.75m).

The research, How Africa Tweets, also carried out a survey of 500 of Africa's most active tweeters. It found Twitter in Africa is fast becoming an important source of information on a continent with few guarantees of press freedom.

Today, the social phenonenom (Twitter) has even become a 'friend' of many celebrities and organizations across the continent as it gives everyone the previllege to communicate to the world in a jiffy.

In a recent check on some of Nigerian top 10 celebrities Twitter profile, Ayodeji Ibrahim Balogun, popularly known as Wizkid, (@wizkidayo) has the highest number of Twitter followers. The brand ambassador of MTN and Pepsi leads has over 1.01million followers.

D’Banj (@iamdbanj) is second with 820,505 followers; the third on the list is Michael Collins (@donjazzy) – 723,594 followers; while Banky Wellington (@BankyW)  and Innocent Idibia (@2faceidibia) with – 694,030 and 691,667 followers are fourth and fifth respectively.

Others are: David Adedeji Adeleke (@iam_Davido) – 674,086 in sixth position; Victor Moses (@VictorMoses) – 614,771 followers; Tiwa Savage (@TiwaSavage) – 594,023 followers; Genevieve Nnaji MFR (@GenevieveNnaji1) – 547,279 followers; Peter Okoye (@PeterPsquare) – 531,245 followers are 7th, 8th, 9th and 10th position respectively.

With the growing number of followers of these celebrities, organizations and govrnment office holders, Twitter will be a microblog that has a great future in Nigeria and Africa at large.